ill 








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Class 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



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ENCYCLOPEDIA 



OF 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA 



JUDGE CHARLES E. FLANDRAU 



VOLUME I 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 

jtccl ghxU and <£oppcv gUtte 3£ngv;iuings 



CHICAGO 
THE CENTURY PUBLISHING AND ENGRAVING COMPANY 

1900 









Libr^/y of ContirMi 
' Wb lUPlEi KltlHED 

OCT 25 1900 

C*MrfgM«*y 
SECOND COPY. 

0. 'and t« 

QROfc* DIVISION, 

OCT 26 1900 



COPYRIGHT, 11)00 

THE CENTURY PUBLISHING AND ENGRAVING COMPANY 

CHICAGO 



^ 

^ 



gcdi cation 



TO THE OLD SETTLERS OF MINNESOTA 

WHO SO WISELY LAID THE FOUNDATION OF OUR STATE UPON THE BROAD AND 

ENDURING BASIS OF FREEDOM AND TOLERATION, THIS HISTORY 

IS MOST GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 

Charles E. Flandrau 



PREFACE. 



Many books of the character and general design of the present 
volume have been given to the public as embodying the history of 
certain States and sections of the Uuion, through the medium of 
biographies aud portraits of their representative men; but this work 
differs essentially from them all, in that, while it contains tin' usual 
features of biography and portraiture, it is also accompanied by a 
succinct, accurate, interesting and readable history of Minnesota, pre- 
pared by one of the oldest and most experienced citizens of the State. 
Judge Flamlrau, the author of this history, has participated in every 
important event which has occurred in Minnesota since its organiza- 
tion as a Territory in 1S4!>, and recounts in a colloquial and pleasing 
style, his personal recollections and knowledge of the growth and 
progress of the State. This history will be read by thousands, where a 
more pretentious and voluminous record would be eschewed as too 
laborious an undertaking. 

The State of Minnesota is quite a youthful member of the Union, 
its history compassing but half a century; yet its marvelous growth 
in all the elements that make for substantial worth and greatness, has 
been phenomenal, and entitles it to a prominent niche in the gallery 
of the sisterhood. 

Besides the history, the work contains the biographies of many of 
the prominent citizens of the State, with their portraits. We feel 
justified in saying that the workmanship and art bestowed on these 
portraits, is of superior excellence, both in the engraving and the 
perfection of the resemblance to the subjects portrayed, while the 
biographical sketches are authentic. It has been the aim of the pub- 
lishers throughout, to include in the list only those who have, by their 
ability, industry and courage, contributed to the building of the State 
to its present eminence. Many have been omitted, who are, no doubt, 
entitled to a place on the roll of honor, their great number making it 
impracticable to include them all in one volume. These omissions may, 
however, be remedied in a subsequent volume. 

In presenting to the public this Encyclopaedia of Biography of 
Minnesota, with its accompanying history, the publishers believe they 
have made a valuable contribution to the history and literature of the 
State, and acknowledge their thanks for the aid and support which 
they have received from their patrons and the people of Minnesota 
generally, in the preparation of this work. 

THE PUBLISHERS. 



CONTENTS OF HISTORY. 



CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. 



Page 

Opening Statement 7 

Legendary and Aboriginal Era 8 

Fort Snelling 12 

Selkirk Settlement 14 

George Catlin 16 

Featherstonhaugh 17 

Schoolcraft; Source of Mississippi 17 

Elevations in Minnesota iS 

Nicollet 18 

Missions 19 

Indians 21 

Territorial Period 24 

Education 26 

First Territorial Government 28 

Courts 29 

First Territorial Legislature 30 

Immigration 3- 

The Panic of 1857 34 

Land Titles 35 

The First Newspaper 35 

Banks 36 

The Fur Trade 37 

Pemmican 39 

Transportation and Express 40 

Lumber 41 

Religion 41 

Railroads 44 

The First Railroad Actually Built 48 

The Spirit Lake Massacre 49 

The Constitutional Convention 51 

Attempt to Remove the Capital 54 

Census 55 

Grasshoppers 55 

Militia 56 

The Wright County War 57 

The Civil War 57 

The Third Regiment 60 

The Indian War of 1862 and Following Years. ... 63 

The Attack on Fort Ridgely 68 

Battle of New Ulm 69 

Battle of Birch Coulie 72 

Occurrences in Meeker County and Vicinity 73 

Protection of the Southern Frontier 74 

Colonel Sibley Moves upon the Enemy 76 



Page 

Battle of Wood Lake 77 

Fort Abercrombie 78 

Camp Release 79 

Trial of the Indians 79 

Execution of 38 Condemned Indians 81 

The Campaign of 1863 82 

Battle of Big Mound 83 

Battle of Dead Buffalo Lake 83 

Battle of Stony Lake 84 

Campaign of 1864 85 

A Long Period of Peace and Prosperity S7 

Introduction of New Process of Milling Wheat. ... 87 

The Discovery of Iron 88 

Commerce Through St. Mary's Falls Canal 89 

Agriculture 90 

Dairying 90 

University of Minnesota and Its School of Agri- 
culture 91 

The Minnesota State Agricultural Society 92 

The Minnesota Soldiers' Home 93 

Other State Institutions 93 

Minnesota Institute for Defectives 94 

State School for Dependent and Neglected Chil- 
dren 94 

The Minnesota State Training School 95 

The Minnesota State Reformatory 95 

The Minnesota State Prison 95 

The Minnesota Historical Society 96 

State Institutions Miscellaneous in Character 96 

State Finances 97 

The Monetary and Business Flurry of 1873 and 

Panic of 1893 97 

Minor Happenings gg 

The War with Spain 100 

The Indian Battle of Leech Lake 102 

Population I0 _j 

The State Flag 105 

The Official Flower of the State, and the Method 

of Its Selection jq6 

Origin of the Name "Gopher State" 107 

State Parks jog 

Politics i I0 

Books Which Have Been Published Relating to 
Minnesota 112 



-I 



INDEX TO BIOGRAPHIES. 



Page 

Adams, David T 243 

Adams, John Q 401 

Aikin, Robert W 261 

Allen, Alvaren 251 

Allen, Clarence D 416 

Ames, Albert A 372 

Andrews, Christopher C 216 

Atwater, Isaac 190 

d'Autremont, Charles 405 

Baker, James H 234 

Barnum, Edward P 402 

Bassett, Daniel 208 

Batchelder, George W 396 

Bean, Jacob 386 

Beebe, Warren L 318 

Belden, Clarendon D 451 

Bierbauer, William 236 

Bigelow, Alexander T 437 

Bigelow, Horace R 184 

Blackmer, Frank A 487 

Blanchard, John 488 

Blodgett, Elijah H 398 

Bonniville, Harlow H 420 

Bowler, James M 435 

Bradley, Henry M 247 

Brady, John D 272 

Brant, Jabez A 296 

Brewster, Henry W 423 

Briggs, Asa G 394 

Brill, Hascal R 442 

Brown, Horatio D 362 

Brown, Rome G 234 

Buck, Daniel 202 

Buckham, Thomas S 460 

Bunn, Charles W 392 

Bunn, George L 239 

Butler, Pierce 481 

Campbell, Samuel L 400 

Cant, William A 303 

Canty, Thomas 293 

Carey, John R 267 

Carleton, Frank H 207 

Cash, Daniel G 245 

Castle, Henry A 379 

Christian Llewellyn 233 

Chute, Richard 165 

Chute, Samuel H 194 

Clapp, Moses E 250 



Page 

Clark, Thomas C 399 

Clark, Greenleaf 142 

Clark, Kenneth 438 

Clarke, Francis B 313 

Clough, William P 403 

Cone, Royal D 204 

Constans, William 416 

Cotter, Joseph B 446 

Cotton, Joseph B : 455 

Crandall, Charles S 393 

Culver, Joshua B 477 

Dalrymple, Oliver 222 

Daniels, Jared W 428 

Davidson, William F 475 

Davis, Cushman K 374 

Davies, Edward W 413 

Dean, William B 345 

Dobbin, James 439 

Dodge, Willis E 487 

Donahower, Jeremiah C 277 

Doran, Michael 237 

Douglass, Marion 248 

Douglas, Wallace B 249 

Dunn, James H 311 

Dunn, Robert C 281 

Dun woody, William H 232 

Edgerton, Erastus S 381 

Ensign, Josiah D 244 

Fanning, John T 266 

Faribault, Alexander 454 

Faribault, Jean B 473 

Farrington, John 241 

Ferris, Allen F 458 

Flandrau. Charles E 187 

Fletcher, Lafayette G. M 255 

Flower, Mark D 279 

Forbes, Melvin J 357 

Frazer, Sheldon L 456 

Freeman, George W 477 

Gerdtzen, Ernst A 325 

Gilbert, Mahlon N 425 

Gilfillan, Charles D 492 

Gilfillan, James 301 

Gilman, John M 349 

Gilmore, Clark W 325 

Goodfellow, Reuben S 263 

Gotzian, Conrad 360 

Gi >tzian, Paul IT 339 



INDEX TO BIOGRAPHIES. 



Page 

Grant, Donald 447 

Graves, Charles H 274 

Grimshaw, William II 374 

Grover, Marcus D 312 

Halden, Odin 4'9 

Hawkins, Henry H 35° 

Hill, Ansel L 445 

Hill, James J 494 

Hodgman, Jesse M 38o 

Hodgson, William 417 

Horton, Charles 328 

Horton, Hiram T 342 

How, Jared 440 

Hubbard, Lucius F 214 

Hubbard, Rensselaer D 287 

Hutchinson, Henry 3 21 

Ireland, John 1 3 l 

Kelly, Anthony l6 ° 

Kelly, Patrick H 276 

Kelly, William L 482 

Kempton. Edward S 275 

King, William S 432 

Kingsley. Nathan C 397 

Koon, Martin B l 99 

Koop. John H 358 

Kron, Frederick 320 

Laird, William H 493 

Lamberton, Henry W 3 2 9 

Lawler, Daniel W l8 ° 

Lind, John '57 

Lindcke. William 412 

Lindsay, Thomas B 320 

Lowry, Thomas l82 

Lowry, William D 478 

Lugger, Otto 324 

.Magic. William H 352 

Mann, Eugene L 320 

Martin, John 340 

Mathews, John A 4" 

McGill, Andrew R 290 

McKinstry, Archibald W 395 

McKnight, Sumner T 359 

Meagher, John F 3 2 6 

Mendenhall, Luther 272 

Merriam, William R 3'° 

Mitchell. Edward C 253 

Mitchell. Henry Z 303 

Mitchell, William 147 

Mitchell, William B 308 

Monfort, Delos A 224 

Montgomery, Thomas 337 

Morin, William 463 

Morrison, Clinton 181 

Morrison, Dorilus 176 

Morrison, Daniel A 304 

Mott, Rodney A 4°7 

Munger, Roger S 269 

Mvrick, Nathan 389 



Page 

Nelson, Benjamin F 371 

Nelson, Knute 423 

Nelson, Rensselaer R 4 02 

Niles, John H 448 

Northrop, Cyrus 196 

Noyes, Charles P 369 

Noyes, Daniel R 1 30 

Noyes, Jonathan L 459 

Nye, Frank M 421 

O'Brien, Thomas D 483 

O'Connor, Richard T 284 

Odell, Robert R 336 

Ogden, Benjamin H 350 

Palmer, George M 362 

Patterson; Robert H 297 

Paulle, Leonard 325 

Peavey, Frank H 219 

Pendergast, William W 421 

Peyton, Hamilton M 271 

Pillsbury. Charles A 200 

Pillsbury, Fred C 264 

Fillsbury, George A 152 

Pillsbury, John S 119 

Pillsbury. Mahala F 125 

Poole, Charles A 468 

Ramsey, Alexander 128 

Reed, Robert 452 ' 

Reynolds, Reuben 300 

Rice. Henry M 364 

Richardson. Henry M 259 

Richter, Edward W 419 

Roberts, Harlan P 378 

Robertson. Daniel A 431 

Rosing, Leonard A 443 

Ruble, George S 414 

Sanborn, John B 162 

Sanborn. Walter H 172 

Sargent. George B 178 

Sargent, William C 319 

Sawyer, Edward 191 

Schaller, Albert 453 

Schurmeier, Theodore L 441 

Searle, Dolson B 368 

Sellwood, Joseph 353 

Severance, Cordenio A 410 

Severance, Martin J 256 

Shaw, John M 149 

Shaw, Thomas 254 

Sheehan, Timothy J 226 

Sheffield, Benjamin B 363 

Sheffield, Milledge B 485 

Shepard, David C 346 

Sherwood, George W 307 

Sherwood, William C 352 

Shevlin, Thomas H 382 

Shoemaker, James 171 

Sibley, Henry H 464 

Simpson, Thomas 185 



INDEX. TO BIOGRAPHIES. 



Page 

Smith, Charles A 370 

Smith, George M 444 

Smith, Hansen 273 

Smith, James 344 

Smith, Teter B 262 

Smith, Robert A 436 

Stanford. Mortimer H (30 

Start, Charles M 192 

Stevens, John H 484 

Stickney. Alpheus B 383 

Stockton, Albert W 461 

Stone, George C 240 

Tawney, James A 332 

Thompson, Joseph 11 341 

Todd, William E 440 

Towne, Charles A 406 

Towne, Edward P 354 

I'mland, George F 343 

Upham, Henry P 438 

Valentine, Daniel H 292 

Van Cleve, Charlotte 493 

Vanderburgh, Charles E 198 

Ward, William G 479 

Washburn, Cadwallader C 167 

Washburn, Christopher C 310 

Washburn, Jed L 314 

Washburn. William D 135 



Page 

Watkins, Joseph R 298 

Webber, Charles C 31; 

Webber, Marshall B 299 

Wedge, Albert C 305 

Welles, Henry T 144 

Werner, Nils 309 

West. John K 4 1 ,x 

Weyerhaeuser, Frederick [93 

Wheeler, John B 466 

Wheelock, Joseph A 490 

Whipple, Henry B 469 

Willard, John A 281 

Willcuts, Levi M 317 

Williston, William C 286 

Willson, Charles C 404 

Wilson Horace B 387 

Wilson, Hudson 398 

Wilson, George P 283 

Wilson, Thomas 170 

Windom, William 209 

Windom, William L 355 

Woodmansee, Benjamin D 2^<) 

Wise, John C 295 

Yi mng, George B 169 

Young, Henry A 206 

Zimmerman, Charles A 384 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA 



BY 



JUDGE CHARLES E. FLANDRAU. 



As the purpose of Ihis volume is to record 
the biographies of the men who have distin- 
guished themselves in one way and another in 
building the State of Minnesota, it was deemed 
in harmony with the general subject to pre- 
mise the same with a compendious history of 
the State, the duty of preparing which I ac- 
cepted with many misgivings as to my fitness 
or ability to do justice to such an undertaking. 
I have decided to reduce the work to the small- 
est possible limits, and still cover the ground. 
It has been a little over fifty years since the or- 
ganization of the Territory which, at its birth, 
was a very small and unimportant creation, 
but which, in its half century of growth, has 
expanded into one of the most brilliant and 
promising stars upon the union of our flag; so 
that its history must cover every subject, 

1 al. physical and social, that enters into the 

composition of a first-class progressive West- 
ern Slate, which presents a pretty extensive 
field; but then' is also to be considered a pe- 
riod anterior to civilization, winch may be 
called the aboriginal and legendary era. which 
abounds with interesting matter, and to the 
general reader is much more attractive than 
the prosy subjects of agriculture, finance and 
commerce. 

Having lived through nearly the whole pe- 
riod of Minnesota's political existence, and 
having taken part in most of the leading events 
in her history, both savage and civilized, I pro- 
pose to treat the various subjects that compose 
her history in a narrative and colloquial man- 
ner thai may not rise to the dignity of history, 
but I think, while giving facts, will not detract 



from the interest or pleasure of the reader; if 
I should, in the course of my narrative, so far 
forget myself as to indulge in a joke, or relate 
an illustrative anecdote, the reader must put 
up with it. 

Nature has been lavishly generous with Min- 
nesota, more so perhaps than with any State in 
the Union. Its surface is beautifully diversified 
between rolling prairies and immense forests 
of valuable timber. Rivers and lakes abound 
and the soil is marvelous in its productive fer- 
tility. Its climate, taken the year round, sur- 
passes that of any part of the North American 
Continent. There are more enjoyable days in 
the three hundred and sixty-five that compose 
the year than in any other country I have ever 
visited or resided in, and that embraces a good 
part of the world's surface. The salubrity of 
.Minnesota is phenomenal; there are absolute- 
ly no diseases indigenous to the State; the 
universally accepted truth of this fact is found 
in a saying which used to be general among 
the old settlers, that "there is no excuse for 
any one dying in Minnesota, and that only two 
men ever did die there, one of whom was 
hanged for killing the other." 

The resources of Minnesota principally con- 
sist of the products of the farm, the mine, the 
dairy, the quarry and the forest, and its indus- 
tries of a vast variety of manufactures of all 
kinds and characters, both great and small, 
the leading ones being Hour and lumber, to 
which, of course, must be added the enormous 
carrying trade which grows out of and is nec- 
essary to the successful conduct of such re- 
sources and industries; all of which subjects 



8 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



will be treated of in their appropriate places. 
A\'i tli these prefatory suggestions I will pro- 
ceed with the history. 



LEGENDARY AND ABORIGINAL ERA. 

There is no doubt that Louis Hennepin, a 
Franciscan priest of the Recollect order, was 
the first white man who ever entered the pres- 
ent boundaries of Minnesota. He was with 
LaSalle at Fort Creve-Coeur, near Lake Peo- 
ria, in what is now Illinois, in 1680. LaSalle 
was the superior of the exploring party of 
which young Hennepin was a member, and in 
February, 1680, he selected Hennepin and two 
traders for the arduous and dangerous under- 
taking of exploring the unknown regions of 
the upper Mississippi. Hennepin was very am- 
bitious to become a great explorer, and was 
tilled with the idea that by following the water 
courses he would find a passage to the sea and 
Japan. 

On the 29th of February, 1680, he, with two 
voyageurs in a canoe, set out on his voyage of 
discovery. When he reached the junction of 
the Illinois river with the Mississippi, in 
March, he was detained by floating ice until 
near the middle of that month. lie then com- 
menced to ascend the Mississippi, which was 
the first time it was ever attempted by a civ- 
ilized man. On the 11th of April they were 
met by a large war party of Dakotas, which 
tilled thirty-three canoes, who opened tire on 
them with arrows, but hostilities were soon 
stopped, and Hennepin and his party were 
taken prisoners and made to return with their 
captors to their villages. 

Hennepin, in his narrative, tells a long story 
of the difficulties he encountered in saying his 
prayers, as the Indians thought he was work- 
ing some magic on them, and they followed 
him into the woods and never let him out of 
their sight. Judging from many things that ap- 
pear in his narrative, which have created great 
doubt about his veracity, it probably would not 
have been very much of a hardship if he had 
failed altogether in the performance of this 



pious duty. Many of the Indians who had lost 
friends and relatives in their fights with the 
Miamis were in favor of killing the white men, 
but better counsels prevailed, and they were 
spared. The hope of opening up a trade inter 
course with the French largely entered into the 

decision. 

While traveling up the river one of the white 
men shot a wild turkey with his gun. which 
produced a great sensation among the Indians, 
and was the first time a Dakota ever heard the 
discharge of firearms. They called the gun 
Ma /.a wakan, or spirit iron. 

Tlie party camped at Lake Pepin, and on the 
nineteenth day of their captivity they arrived 
in the vicinity of while St. Paul now stands. 
Prom this point they proceeded by land to 
Mille Lacs, where they were taken by the In- 
dians to their several villages, and were kindly 
treated. These Indians were part of the band 
of Dakotas, called M'de-wa-kon-ton-wans, or 
the Lake Villagers. 1 1 spell the Indian names as 
they are now known, and not as they are given 
in Hennepin's narrative, although it is quite 
remarkable how well he preserved them with 
sound as his only guide.) 

While at this village the Indians gave Hen- 
nepin some steam baths, which he says were 
very effective in removing all traces of sore- 
ness and fatigue, and in a short time made him 
feel as well and strong as he ever was. I have 
often witnessed this medical process among 
the Dakotas. They make a small lodge of poles 
covered with a buffalo skin or something sim- 
ilar, and place in it several large boulders 
heated to a high degree. The patient then en- 
ters naked, and pours water over the stones, 
producing a dense steam, which envelops him 
and nearly boils him. lb' stands it as long as 
he can, and then undergoes a thorough rub- 
bing. The effect is to remove stillness and 
soreness produced by long journeys on foot or 
other serious labor. 

Hennepin tells in a very agreeable way many 
things that occurred during his captivity; how- 
astonished the Indians were at all the articles 
he had. A mariner's compass created much 
wonder, and an iron pot with feet like lions' 
paws they would not touch with the naked 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



hand; but their astonishment knew no bounds 
when he told them that the whites only al- 
lowed a man one wife, and that his religious 
office did not permit him to have any. 

I might say here that the Dakotas are 
polygamous, as savage people generally are, 
and that my experience proves to me that mis- 
sionaries who go among these people make a 
great mistake in attacking this institution un- 
til after they have ingratiated themselves with 
them, and then by attempting any reform be- 
yond teaching monogamy in the future. Noth- 
ing will assure the enmity of a savage more 
than to ask him to discard any of his wives, 
and especially the mother of his children. 
While I would be the last man on earth to ad- 
vocate polygamy, I can truthfully say that one 
of the happiest and most harmonious families 
I ever knew was that of the celebrated Little 
Crow, who, during all my official residence 
among the Dakotas, was my principal advisor 
and ambassador, and who led the massacre in 
1802. He had four wives, hut there was a point- 
in his favor — they were all sisters. 

Hennepin passed the time he spent in Min- 
nesota in baptizing Indian babies and picking 
up all the information he could find. His prin- 
cipal exploit was the naming of the Falls of 
St. Anthony, which he called after his patron 
saint "Saint Anthony of Padua." 

That Hennepin was thoroughly convinced 
that there was a northern passage to the sea 
which could he reached by ships is proven by 
the following extract from his work: "For ex- 
ample, we may be transported into the Pacific 
sea by rivers, which are large and capable of 
carrying great vessels, and from thence it is 
very easy to go to China and Japan without 
crossing the equinoctial line, and in all proba- 
bility Japan is on the same continent as Amer- 
ica." 

Our first visitor evidently had very confused 
ideas on matters of geography. The first ac- 
count of his adventures was published by him 
in 1683, and was quite trustworthy, and it is 
much to be regretted that he was afterwards 
induced to publish another edition in Utrecht, 
in 16S0, which was filled with falsehoods and 
exaggerations, which brought upon him the 



censure of the king of Fiance. He died in ob- 
scurity, unregretted. The county of Hennepin 
is named for him. 

Other Frenchmen visited Minnesota shortly 
after Hennepin for the purpose of trade with 
the Indians and the extension of the Territory 
of New France. In 1089 Nicholas Perot was 
established at Lake Pepin with quite a large 
body of men, engaged in trade with the In- 
dians. On the 8th of May, 1689, Perot issued 
a proclamation from his post on Lake Pepin, 
in which he formally took possession in the 
name of the king of all the countries inhab- 
ited by the Dakotas "and of which they are 
proprietors." This post was the first French 
establishment in Minnesota. It was called 
Fort Bon Secours; afterwards Fort Le Sueur, 
but on later maps Fort Perot. 

In 1005 Le Sueur built the second post in 
Minnesota between the head of Lake Pepin and 
the mouth of the St. Croix. In July of that year 
he took a party of Ojibways and one Dakota to 
Montreal for the purpose of impressing upon 
them the importance and strength of France. 
Here large bodies of troops were maneuvered 
in their presence and many speeches made by 
both the French and the Indians. Friendly 
and commercial relations were established. 

Le Sueur, some time after, returned to Min- 
nesota ami explored St. Peter's river (now the 
.Minnesota) as far as the mouth of the Blue 
Earth. Here he built a log fort and called it 
L'Hullier, and made some excavations in 
search of copper ore. He sent several tons of 
a green substance which he found and sup- 
posed to be copper', to France, but it was un- 
doubtedly a colored clay that is found in that 
region, aiid is sometimes used as a rough paint. 
He is supposed to be the first man who sup- 
plied the Indians with guns. Le Sueur kept a 
journal in which he gave the best description 
of the Dakotas written in those early times, 
and was a very reliable man. Minnesota has a 
county and a city named for him. 

Many other Frenchmen visited Minnesota in 
early (lays, among whom was Du Luth, but as 
they were simply traders, explorers and priests 
among the Indians it is hardly necessary in a 
work of this character to trace their exploits 



IO 



niSTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



in detail. While they blazed the trail for oth- 
ers (hey did not, to any great extent, influence 
the future of the country, except by supplying 
a convenient nomenclature with which to 
designate localities, which has largely been 
drawn upon. Many of them, however, were 
good and devoted men, and earnest in their en- 
deavors to spread the gospel among the In- 
dians; how well they succeeded I will discuss 
when I speak of these savage men more par- 
ticularly. 

The next arrival of sufficient importance to 
particularize was Jonathan Carver. He was 
born in Connecticut in 1732. His father was a 
justice of the peace, which in those days was 
a more important position than it is now re- 
garded. They tried to make a doctor of him, 
and he studied medicine just long enough to 
discover that the profession was uncongenial 
and abandoned it. At the age of eighteen he 
purchased an ensign's commission in a Connec- 
ticut regiment, raised during the French war. 
He came very near losing his life at the mas 
sacre of Fort William Henry, but escaped, and 
after the declaration of peace between France 
and England, in 1763, he conceived the project 
of making an exploration of the Northwest. 

It should be remembered that the French 
sovereignty over the Northwest ceased in 1703, 
when, by a treaty made in Versailles, between 
the French and the English, all the lands em- 
braced in what is now Minnesota were ceded 
by the French to England, so Carver came as 
an Englishman into English territory. 

Carver left Boston in the month of June, 
1766, and proceeded to Mackinaw, then the 
most distant British post, where he arrived in 
the month of August. He then took the usual 
route to Green bay. He proceeded by the way 
of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers to the Missis- 
sippi. He found a considerable town on the 
Mississippi near the mouth of the Wisconsin, 
called by the French "La Prairie les Chiens," 
which is now Prairie du Chien, or the Dog 
Prairie, named after an Indian chief who went 
by the dignified name of "The Dog." He speaks 
of this town as one where a great central fur 
trade was carried on by the Indians. From 
this point he commenced his voyage up the 



Mississippi in a canoe, and when he reached 
Lake Pepin he claims to have discovered a sys- 
tem of earthworks which he describes as of the 
most scientific military construction, and in- 
ferred that they had been at some time the 
intrenchments of a people well versed in the 
arts of war. It takes very little to excite an 
enthusiastic imagination into the belief that 
it has found what it has been looking for. 

He found a cave in what is now known as 
Dayton's Bluff, and describes it as immense in 
extent and covered with Indian hieroglyphics, 
and speaks of a burying place at a little (lis 
tance from the cavern, and made a short voy- 
age up the Minnesota river, which he says the 
Indians called "Wadapaw Mennesoto-r." This 
probably is as near as he could catch the name 
by sound; it should be Wak-pa Minnesota. 

After his voyage to the Falls and up the Miu- 
nesota he returned to his cave, where he says 
there were assembled a great council of In- 
dians, to which he was admitted, and witnessed 
the burial ceremonies, which he describes as 
follows: 

"After the breath is departed the body is 
dressed in the same attire it usually wore, 
his face is painted, and he is seated in an 
erect posture on a mat or skin placed in the 
middle of the hut with his weapons by his side. 
His relatives seated around, each harangues 
the deceased; and, if he has been a great war- 
rior, recounts his heroic actions nearly to the 
following purport, which, in the Indian lan- 
guage, is extremely poetical and pleasing: 
'You still sit among us, brother; your per- 
son retains its usual resemblance and continues 
similar to ours, without any visible deficiency 
except it has lost the power of action. But 
whither is that breath flown which a few hours 
ago sent up smoke to the Great Spirit? Why 
are those lips silent that lately delivered to us 
expressions and pleasing language? Why are 
those feet motionless that a short time ago 
were fleeter than the deer on yondermountains? 
Why useless hang those arms that could climb 
the tallest tree or draw the toughest bow? 
Alas! Every part of that frame which we late- 
ly beheld with admiration and wonder is now 
become as inanimate as it was three hundred 
years ago! We will not, however, bemoan 
thee as if thou wast forever lost to us, or that 
thy name would be buried in oblivion. Thy 
soul yet lives in the great country of spirits 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



II 



with those of thy nation that have gone before 
thee; and though we are left behind to perpet- 
uate thy fame, we shall one day join thee. 

Actuated by the respect we bore thee whilst 
living, we now come to tender thee the last act 
of kindness in our power; that thy body might 
not lie neglected on the plain and become a 
prey to the beasts of the field and the birds of 
the air, we will take care to lay it with those 
of thy ancestors who have gone before thee, 
hoping at the same time that thy spirit will 
feed with their spirits, and be ready to receive 
ours when we shall also arrive at the great 
country of souls.' " 

I have heard many speeches made by the 
descendants of these same Indians, and have 
many times addressed them on all manner of 
subjects, but I never heard anything quite so 
elegant as the oration put into their mouths 
by Carver. I have always discovered that a 
good interpreter makes a good speech. On one 
occasion, when a delegation of Pillager Chip- 
pewa s was in Washington to settle some mat- 
ters with the government, they wanted a cer- 
tain concession which the Indian commissioner 
would not allow, and they appealed to the 
President, who was then Franklin Pierre. Old 
Flatmouth, the chief, presented the case. Paul 
Beaulieu interpreted it so feelingly that the 
President surrendered without a contest. 
After informing him as to the disputed point, 
he added: 

"Father, you are great and powerful; you 
live in a beautiful home where the bleak win<ls 
never penetrate. Your hunger is always ap- 
peased with the choicest foods. Your heart is 
kept warm by all these blessings, and would 
bleed at the sight of distress among your red 
children. Father, we are poor and weak; we 
live far away in the cheerless north in bark 
lodges; we are often cold and hungry. Father, 
what we ask is to you as nothing, while to us 
it is comfort and happiness. Give it to us, and 
when you stand upon your grand portico some 
bright winter night and see the northern lights 
dancing in the heavens it will be the thanks of 
your red children ascending to the Great Spirit 
for your goodness to them." 

Carver seems to have been a sagacious ob- 
server and a man of great foresight. In speak- 
ing of the advantages of the country, he says 



that the future population will be "able to 
convey their produce to the seaports with 
^real facility, the current of the river from its 
source to its entrance into the Gulf of Mexico 
being extremely favorable for doing this in 
small craft. This might also in lime be facili- 
tated by canals or short cuts and a communi- 
cation opened with New York by way of the 
lakes." He was also impressed with the idea 
that a route could lie discovered by way of the 
Minnesota river, which "would open a passage 
for conveying intelligence to China and the 
English settlements in the East Indies." 

The nearest to a realization of this theory 
that I have known was the sending of the stern 
wheeled steamer "Freighter" on a voyage up 
the Minnesota to Winnipeg some time in the 
early fifties. She took freight and passengers 
for that destination, but never reached the Red 
River of the North. 

After the death of Carver his heirs claimed 
that while at the great cave. May 1, 17G7, the 
Indians made him a large grant of land, which 
would cover St. Paul and a large part of Wis- 
consin, and several attempts were made to 
have it ratified by both the British and Amer- 
ican governments, but without success. Carver 
does not mention this grant in his book, nor 
has the original deed ever been found. A copy, 
however, was produced, and as il was the first 
real eslate transaction that ever occurred in 
Minnesota I will set it out in full: 

"To Jonathan Carver, a < 'hief under the Most 
Mighty and potent, George the Third, King of 
the English and other nations, the fame of 
whose warriors has reached our ears, and has 
been fully told us by our good brother Jona- 
than aforesaid, whom we all rejoice to have 
come among us and bring us good news from 
Ins country: 

WE, Chiefs of the Nandowessies, who have 
hereunto set our seals, do, by these presents, 
for ourselves and heirs forever, in return for 
I lie aid and good services done by the said Jon- 
alhan to ourselves and allies, give, grant and 
convey to him, the said Jonathan, and to his 
heirs and assigns forever, the whole of a cer- 
tain Territory or tract of land, bounded as fol- 
lows, viz: From the Falls of St. Anthony, run- 
ning on east bank of the Mississippi, nearly 
southeast as far as Lake Pepin, where the 



12 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



Chippewa joins the Mississippi, and from 
(hence eastward, five days' travel accounting 
twenty English miles per day, and from thence 
again to the Falls of St. Anthony on a direct 
straight line. We do for ourselves, heirs and 
assigns, forever give unto said Jonathan, his 
heirs and assigns, with all the trees, rocks ami 
rivers therein, reserving the sole liberty of 
hunting and fishing on land not planted or im- 
proved by the said Jonathan, his heirs and as- 
signs, to which we have affixed our respective 
seals. 

At the Great Cave, May 1st, 17G7. 

(Signed) Hawnopawjatin. 

Otohtongoonlishea w ." 

This alleged instrument bears upon its face 
many marks of suspicion and was very prop- 
erly rejected by General Leavenworth, who, in 
1821, made a report of his investigations in re- 
gard to it to the commissioner of the general 
land office. 

The war between the Chippewas and the 
Dakotas continued to rage with varied success, 
as it has since time immemorial. It was a 
bitter, cruel war, waged against the race and 
blood, and each successive slaughter only in- 
creased the hatred and heaped fuel upon the 
fire. As an Indian never forgives the killing of 
a relative, and as the particular murderer, as 
a general thing, was not known on either side, 
each death was charged up to the tribe. These 
wars, although constant, had very little influ- 
ence on the standing or progress of the coun- 
try, except so far as they may have proved 
detrimental or beneficial to the fur trade pros- 
ecuted by the whites. The first event after the 
appearance of Jonathan Carver that can lie 
considered as materially affecting the history 
of Minnesota was the location and erection of 
Fort Snelling, of which event I will give a brief 
account. 



FORT SNELLING. 



In 1805 the government decided to procure 
a site on which to build a fort, somewhere on 
the waters of the upper Mississippi, and sent 
Lieut. Zebubon Montgomery Pike, of the army, 
to explore the country, expel British traders. 



who might be violating the laws of the United 
States, and to make treaties with the Indians. 

September 21, 1805, he encamped on what 
is now known as Pike island, at the junction 
uf the .Mississippi and Minnesota, then St. Pe- 
ter's river. Two days later he obtained, by 
treaty with the Dakota nation, a tract of land 
for a military reservation with the following 
boundaries, extending from "below the con- 
fluence of the Mississippi and St. Peters' up the 
.Mississippi to include the Falls of St. Anthony, 
extending nine miles on each side of the river." 
The United States paid two thousand dollars 
for this land. 

The reserve thus purchased was not used for. 
military purposes until February 10, 1819, at 
which time the government gave the following 
reasons for erecting a fort at this point: "To 
cause the power of the United States Govern- 
ment to be fully acknowledged by the Indians 
and settlers of the Northwest; to prevent Lord 
Selkirk, the Hudson Bay Company and others, 
from establishing trading posts on United 
States territory; to better the condition of the 
Indians, and to develop the resources of the 
country." Part of the Fifth United States In- 
fantry, commanded by Col. Henry Leaven- 
worth, was dispatched to select a site and erect 
a post. They arrived at the St. Peters' river 
in September, 1819, and camped on or near the 
spot where now stands Mendota. During the 
winter of 1819-20 the troops were terribly af- 
flicted with scurvy. Gen. Sibley, in an address 
before the Minnesota Historical Society, in 
speaking of it, says: "So sudden was the at- 
tack that soldiers apparently in good health 
when they retired at night were found dead 
in the morning. One man was relieved from 
his tour of sentinel duty and had stretched him- 
self upon a bench; when he was called four 
hours later to resume his duties he was found 
lifeless." 

In May, 1820, the command left their can 
tonment, crossed the St. Peters' and went into 
summer camp at a spring near the old Baker 
trading house, and about two miles above the 
present site of Fort Snelling. This was called 
"('amp Coldwater." During the summer the 
men were busy in procuring logs and other 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



13 



material necessary for the work. The first site 
selected was where the present military ceme- 
tery stands, and the post was called "Fort St. 
Anthony"; but in August, 1S20, Col. Joshua 
Snelling of the Fifth United States Infantry 
arrived, and, on taking command, changed the 
site to where Fort Snelling now stands. Work 
steadily progressed until September 10, ls20, 
when the cornerstone of Fort St. Anthony was 
laid with all due ceremony. The first meas- 
ured distance that was given between this new 
post and the next one down the river, Fort 
Crawford, where Prairie du Chien now stands, 
was 204 miles. The work was steadily pushed 
forward. The buildings were made of logs, 
and were first occupied in October, 1822. 

The first steamboat to arrive at the post was 
the "Virginia," in 182:'. The first saw-mill in 
Minnesota was constructed by the troops in 
1822, and the first lumber sawed on Rum river 
was for use in building the post. The mill site 
is now included within I he corporate limits of 
Minneapolis. 

The post continued to be called Fort St. An- 
thony until 1824, when, upon the recommenda- 
tion of General Scott, who inspected the Fort, 
it was named Fort Snelling, in honor of its 
founder. In 1830, stone buildings were erected 
for a four company post ; also a stone hospital 
and a stone wall, nine feet high, surrounding 
the whole post, but these improvements were 
not actually completed until after the Mexican 
War. 

The Indian title to the military reservation 
does not seem to have been etl'ectuallyacquired, 
notwithstanding the treaty of Lieutenant Pike 
made with the Indians in 1805, until the treaty 
with the Dakotas, in 1837, by which the Indian 
claim to all the lands east of the Mississippi, in- 
cluding the reservation, ceased. In 1836, be- 
fore the Indian title was finally acquired, quite 
a number of settlers located on the reservation 
on the left bank of the Mississippi. 

October 21, 1839, the President issued an 
order for their removal, and on May 0, 1840, 
some of the settlers were forcibly removed. 

In 1837 Mr. Alexander Faribault presented a 
claim for Pike island, which was based upon a 
treaty made by him with the Dakotas in 1820. 



Whether his claim was allowed, the records do 
not disclose, and it is unimportant. 

May 25, 1853, a military reservation for the 
fort was set off by the President, of seven 
thousand acres, which in the following Novem- 
ber was reduced to six thousand. 

In 1857, the Secretary of War, pursuant to 
the authority vested in him by act of Congress 
of March 3,1857, sold the Fort Snelling reserva- 
tion, excepting two small tracts, to Mr. Frank- 
lin Steele, who had long been sutler of the post, 
for the sum of ninety thousand dollars, which 
was to be paid in three installments. The first 
one of thirty thousand dollars was paid by Mr. 
Steele, July 25, 1857, and he took possession, 
the troops being withdrawn. 

The fort was sold at private sale and the 
price paid was, in my opinion, vastly more than 
it was worth, but Mr. Steele had great hopes 
for the future of that locality as a site for a 
town and was willing to risk the payment. The 
sale was made, by private contract, by Secre- 
tary Floyd, who adopted this manner because 
other reservations had been sold at public auc- 
tion, after full publication of notice to the 
world, and had brought only a few cents per 
acre. The whole transaction was in perfect 
good faith, but it was attacked in Congress, 
and an investigation ordered, which resulted in 
suspending its consummation, and Mr. Steele 
did not pay the balance due. In I860 the Civil 
War broke out and the fort was taken posses- 
sion of by the government for use in fitting out 
Minnesota troops and was held until the 
war ended. In 1808 Mr. Steele presented a 
claim against the government for rent of the 
fort and other matters relating to it, which 
amounted to more than the price he agreed to 
pay for it. 

An act of Congress was passed, May 7, 1870, 
authorizing the Secretary of War to settle the 
whole matter on principles of equity, keeping 
such reservation as was necessary for the fort. 
In pursuance of this act, a military board was 
appointed and the whole controversy was ar- 
ranged to the satisfaction of Mr. Steele and the 
government. The reservation was reduced to a 
little more than fifteen hundred acres. A grant 
of ten acres was made to the little Catholic. 



14 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



church at Mendota for a cemetery, and other 
small tracts were reserved about the Falls of 
Minnehaha and elsewhere, and all the balance 
was conveyed h> Mr. Steele, he releasing the 

government from all claims and demands. The 
action of the Secretary of War in carrying out 
this settlement was approved by the President 

in 1871. 

The fort was 01 1' the besl structures of 

the kind ever erected in the West. It was 
capable of accommodating five or six com- 
panies of infantry, was surrounded by a high 
stone wall and protected at the only exposed 
approaches by stone bastions guarded by 
cannon and musketry, its supply of water was 
obtained from a well in the parade ground 
near the sutler's store, which was sunk below 
the surface of the river. It was perfectly im- 
pregnable to any savage enemy, and in conse- 
quence was never called upon to stand a siege. 

Perched upon a prominent blurt at the con 
fluenceof the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, 
it has witnessed the changes that have gone 
on around it for three-quarters of a century, 
and witnessed the most extraordinary trans- 
formations that have occurred in any similar 
period in the history of our country. When its 
corner stone was laid it formed the extreme 
frontier of the Northwest, with nothing but 
wild animals and wilder men within hundreds 
of miles in any direction. The frontier has re- 
ceded to the westward until it has lost itself 
in the corresponding one being pushed from 
the Pacific to the East. The Indians have lost 
their splendid freedom as lords of a Continent 
and are prisoners, cribbed upon narrow 7 reser- 
vations. The magnificent herds of buffalo that 
ranged from the British possessions to Texas 
have disappeared from the face of the earth 
and nothing remains but the white man bear- 
ing his burden, which is constantly being made 
more irksome. To I hose who have played both 
parts in the moving drama, there is much food 
for thought. 

I devote so much space to Fori Snelling be- 
cause it has always sustained the position of a 
pivotal center to Minnesota. In the infancy of 
society it radiated the refinement and elegance 
that leavened the country around. In hospital- 



ity its officers were never surpassed, and when 
danger threatened, its protecting arm assured 

safety. For many long years it was the thsi 
to wi Ironic i he Incomer to the country and will 
ever be remembered by the old settlers as a 
friend. 

After the headquarters of the Department 
of the Dakota was established at St. Paul, and 
when General Sherman was in command of the 
army, he thought that the offices should be at 
tlie fort and removed them there. This caused 
the erection of the new administration build- 
ing and the beautiful line of officers' quarters 
about a mile above the old walled structure, 
and its practical abandonment, but it was s;pon 
found to be inconvenient in a business way and 
the department headquarters were restored to 
the city, where they now remain. 

Since the fort was built nearly every officer 
in the old army, and many of those who have 
followed them, have been stationed at Fort 
Snelling, and it was beloved by them all. 

The situation of the fort, now that the rail 
roads have become the reliance of all trans 
portation, both for speed and safety, is a most 
advantageous one from a military point of 
view. It is at the center of a railroad system 
that reaches all parts of the Continent, and 
troops and munitions of war can be deposited 
at any point with the utmost dispatch. It is 
believed that it will not only be retained but 
enlarged. 



THE SELKIRK SETTLEMENT. 

Lord Selkirk, to check whose operations 
were among the reasons given for the erection 
of Fort Snelling, was a Scotch earl who was 
very wealthy and enthusiastic on the subjecl 
of founding colonies in the Northwestern Brit- 
ish possessions, lie was a kind-hearted, but 
visionary man, and had no practical knowledge 
whatever on the subject of colonization in un- 
civilized countries. About the beginning of 
the Nineteenth Century he wrote several 
pamphlets urging the importance of colonizing 
British emigrants on British soil to prevent 
them settling in the United States. In 1S11 he 



TTTKTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



15 



obtained a grant of land from the Hudson Bay 
Company in the region of Lake Winnipeg, the 
Ked River of the North and the Assinaboine, 
in what is now Manitoba. 

Previous to this time the inhabitants of this 
region, besides the Indians, were Canadians, 
who had intermingled with the savages, learn- 
ing all their vices and none of their good 
traits. They were called "Gens libre," free 
people, and were very proud of the title. Mr. 
Neil, in his history of Minnesota, in describing 
them, says they were fond of 

"Vast and sudden deeds of violence, 
Adventures wild and wonders of the moment." 

The offspring of their intercourse with the 
Indian women were numerous and called 
"Bois Brules." They were a line race of hunt- 
ers, horsemen and boatmen, and possessed all 
the accomplishments of the voyageur. They 
spoke the language of both father and mother. 

In 1812 a small advance party of colonists 
arrived at the Red River of the North in about 
latitude 50 degrees north. They were, however, 
frightened away by a party of men of the 
Northwest Fur Company, dressed as Indians, 
and induced to take refuge at Pembina, in Min- 
nesota, where they spent the winter suffering 
the greatest hardships. Many died, but the 
survivors returned in the spring to the colony 
and made an effort to raise a crop, but it was a 
failure, and they again passed the winter at 
Pembina. This was the winter of 1813 - 14. 
They again returned to the colony in a very 
distressed and dilapidated condition in the 
spring. 

By September, 1815, the colony, which then 
numbered about two hundred, was getting 
along quite prosperously, and its future 
seemed auspicious. It was called "Kildonan," 
after a parish in Scotland in which the colon- 
ists were born. 

The employees of the Northwest Fur Com- 
pany were, however, very restive under any- 
thing that looked like improvement and re- 
garded it as a ruse of their rival, the Hudson 
Bay Company, to break up the lucrative busi- 
ness they were enjoying in the Indian trade. 



They resorted to all kinds of measures to get 
rid of the colonists, even to attempting to in- 
cite the Indians against them, and on one occa- 
sion, by a trick, disarmed them of their brass 
field pieces and other small artillery. Many of 
the disaffected Selkirkers deserted to the quar- 
ters of the Northwest Company. These annoy- 
ances were carried to the extent of an attack 
on the house of the Governor, where four of the 
inmates were wounded, one of whom died. 
They finally agreed to leave, and were escorted 
to Lake Winnipeg, where they embarked in 
boats. Their improvements were all destroyed 
by the Northwest people. 

They were again induced to return to their 
colony lands by the Hudson Bay people, and 
did so in 1816, when they were reinforced by 
new colonists. Part of them wintered at Pem- 
bina in 1816, but returned to the Kildonan set- 
tlement in the spring. 

Lord Selkirk, hearing of the distressed con- 
dition of his colonists, sailed for New York, 
where he arrived in the fall of 1815, and 
learned they had been compelled to leave the 
settlement. He proceeded to Montreal, where 
he found some of the settlers in the greatest 
poverty, but learning that a large number of 
them still remained in the colony he sent an 
express to announce his arrival and say that he 
would be with them in the spring. The news 
was sent by a colonist named Laquimonier, but 
he was waylaid and, near Fond du Lac, bru- 
tally beaten and robbed of his dispatches. Sub- 
sequent investigation proved that this was the 
work of the Northwest Company. 

Selkirk tried to obtain military aid from the 
British authorities, but failed. He then en- 
gaged four officers and over one hundred pri- 
vates who had served in the late war with the 
United States to accompany him to the Red 
river. He was to pay them, give them lands 
and send them home if they wished to return. 
When he reached Sault Ste. Marie he heard 
that his colony had again been destroyed. War 
was raging between the Hudson Bay people 
and the Northwest Company, in which Gov- 
ernor Semple, chief governor of the factories 
and territories of the Hudson Bay Company, 
was killed. Selkirk proceeded to Fort William, 



i6 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



on Lake Superior, and finally reached his set- 
tlement on the Red river. 

The colonists were compelled to pass the 
winter of 1817 in hunting in Minnesota, and 
had a hard time of it. In the spring they once 
more found their way home and planted crops, 
but they were destroyed by grasshoppers, 
which remained during the next year and ate 
up every growing thing, rendering it necessary 
that the colonists should again resort to the 
buffalo for subsistence. 

During the winter of 1819 - 20 a deputation of 
these Scotchmen came all the way to Prairie 
du Chien on snowshoes for seed wheat, a dis- 
tance of a thousand miles, and on the 15th day 
of April, 1820, left for the colony in three 
Mackinaw boats, carrying three hundred bush- 
els of wheat, one hundred bushels of oats, and 
thirty bushels of peas. Being stopped by ice 
in Lake Pepin, they planted a May pole and 
celebrated May day on the ice. They reached 
home by May of the Minnesota river with a 
short portage to Lac Traverse, the boats being 
moved on rollers, and thence down the Red 
river to Pembina, where they arrived in safety 
June 3. This trip cost Lord Selkirk about six 
thousand dollars. 

Nothing daunted by the terrible sufferings 
of his colonists and the immense expense at- 
tendant upon his enterprise, in 1820 he engaged 
Capt. R. May, who was a citizen of Berne, 
Switzerland, but in the British service, to visit 
Switzerland and get recruits for his colony. 
The Captain made the most exaggerated repre- 
sentations of the advantages to be gained by 
emigrating to the colony, and induced many 
Swiss to leave their happy and peaceful homes 
to try their fortunes in the distant, dangerous 
and inhospitable regions of Lake Winnipeg. 
They knew nothing of the hardships in store 
for them and were the least adapted to en- 
counter them of any people in the world, as 
they were mechanics, whose business had been 
the delicate work of making watches and 
clocks. They arrived in 1821, and from year to 
year, after undergoing hardships that might 
have appalled the hardiest pioneer, their spir- 
its drooped, they pined for home, and left for 
the South. At one time a party of two hun- 



dred and forty-three of them departed for the 
United States and found homes at different 
points on the banks of the .Mississippi. 

Before the eastern wave of immigration had 
ascended above Prairie du Chien, many Swiss 
had opened farms at and near St. Paul, and be- 
came the first actual settlers of the country. 
Col. John H. Stevens, in an address on the early 
history of Hennepin county,says that they were 
driven from their homes in 1836 and 1S37 by 
the military at Fort Snelling, and is very se- 
vere on the autocratic conduct of the officers of 
the fort, saying that the commanding officers 
were lords of the North, and the subordinates 
were princes. I have no doubt they did not 
underrate their authority, but I think Colonel 
Stevens must refer to the removals that were 
made of settlers on the military reservation of 
which I have before spoken. 

The subject of the Selkirk colony cannot fail 
to interest the reader, as it was the first at- 
tempt to introduce into the great Northwest 
settlers for the purposes of peaceful agricul- 
ture — everybody else who had preceded them 
having been connected with the half-savage 
business of the Indian trade; and the reason I 
have dwelt so long upon the subject is because 
these people on their second emigration fur- 
nished Minnesota with her first settlers, and, 
curiously enough, they came from the North. 

Abraham Perry was one of these Swiss refu- 
gees from the Selkirk settlement, who, with his 
wife and two children, settled at Fort Snelling 
first, then at St. Paul, and finally at Lake Jo- 
hanna. His son Charles, who came with him, 
has, while I am writing, on the 29th of July, 
1899, celebrated his golden wedding at the old 
homestead at Lake Johanna, where they have 
ever since lived. They were married by the Rt. 
Rev. A. Ravoux, who is still living in St. Paul. 
Charles Perry is the only survivor of that ill- 
fated band of Selkirkers. 



GEORGE CATLIN. 



In 1835 George Catlin, an artist of some 
merit, visited Minnesota and made many 
sketches and portraits of Indians. His pub- 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



17 



lisbed statements after his departure, concern- 
ing his personal adventures, have elicited ad- 
verse criticism from the settlers of that period. 



FEATHERSTONHAUGI1. 

Featherstonhaugh, an Englishman, about 
the same time, under the direction of the 
United States Government, made a slight geo- 
logical survey of the Minnesota valley, and on 
his return to England he wrote a book which 
reflected unjustly upon the gentlemen he met 
in Minnesota; but not much was thought of it, 
because, until recently, such has been the En- 
glish custom. 



SCHOOLCRAFT AND THE SOURCE OF 

THE MISSISSIPPI. 

In 1832 the United States sent an embassy, 
composed of thirty men, under Henry R. 
Schoolcraft, then Indian agent at Ste. Marie, to 
visit the Indians of the Northwest, and when 
advisable to make treaties with them. They 
had a guard of soldiers, a physician, an inter 
prefer, and the Rev. William T. Boutwell, a 
missionary at Leech lake. They were supplied 
with a large outfit of provisions, tobacco and 
trinkets, which were conveyed in a bateau. 
They traveled in several large bark canoes. 
They went to Fond du Lac, thence up the St. 
Louis river, portaged round the falls, thence to 
the nearest point to Sandy lake, thence up the 
Mississippi to Leech lake. While there they 
learned from the Indians that Cass lake, which 
for some time had been reputed to be the 
source of the Mississippi, was not the real 
source, and they determined to solve the prob- 
lem of where the real source was to be found, 
and what it was. 

I may say here, that in 1810, Gen. Lewis Cass, 
then Governor of the Territory of Michigan, 
had led an exploring party to the upper waters 
of the Mississippi, somewhat similar to the one 
I am now speaking of, Mr. Henry P. School- 
craft being one of them. When they reached 



what is now Cass lake, in the Mississippi 
river, they decided that it was the source of the 
gnat river, and it was named t'ass lake, in 
honor of the Governor, and was believed to be 
such until the arrival of Schoolcraft's party in 
L832. 

After a search an inlet was found into Cass 
lake, flowing from the west, and they pursued 
it until the lake now called "Itasca" was 
reached. Five of the party, Lieutenant Allen, 
Mr. Schoolcraft, Dr. Houghton, Interpreter 
Johnson and Mr. Boutwell, explored the lake 
thoroughly and, finding no inlet, decided it 
must be the true source of the river. Mr. 
Schoolcraft, being desirous of giving the lake 
a name that would indicate its position as the 
true head of the river, and at the same time be 
euphonious in sound, endeavored to produce 
one; but being unable to satisfy himself, turned 
it over to Mr. Boutwell, who, being a good 
Latin scholar, wrote down the Latin words, 
"Veritas," truth, and "caput," head, and sug- 
gested that a word might be coined out of 
the combination that would answer the pur- 
pose. He then cut off the last two syllables of 
Veritas, making "Itas," and the first syllable 
of caput, making "ca," and, putting them to- 
gether, formed the word "Itasca," which in my 
judgment is a sufficiently skillful and beautiful 
literary feat to immortalize the inventor. Mr. 
Hunt well died within a few years at Stillwater, 
in Minnesota. 

Presumptuous attempts have been made to 
deprive Schoolcraft of the honor of having dis- 
covered the true source of the river, but their 
transparent absurdity has prevented their hav- 
ing obtained any credence, and to put a quietus 
on such unscrupulous pretences Mr. J. V. 
Brower, a scientific surveyor, under the aus- 
pices of the Minnesota Historical Society, has 
recently made exhaustive researches, surveys 
and maps of the region, and established beyond 
dmibt or cavil the entire authenticity of School- 
craft's discovery. Gen. James H. Baker, one* 1 
Surveyor General of the State of Minnesota, 
and a distinguished member of the same so- 
ciety, under its appointment, prepared an elab- 
orate paper on the subject, in which is col- 
lected and presented all the facts, history and 



i8 



niSTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



knowledge thai exists, relating to the discov- 
ery, and conclusively destroyed all efforts to 
deprive Schoolcrafl of his laurels. 



ELEVATIONS IX MINNESOTA. 

While on the subject of (lie source of the 
.Mississippi river, T may as well speak of the 
elevations of the State above the level of the 
sea. It can lie truthfully said that Minnesota 
occupies the summit of the North American 
continent. In its most northern third, rises the 
Mississippi, which in its general course Hows 
due south to the Gulf of .Mexico. In about its 
center division, from north to south, rises the 
Red River of the North, and takes a general 
northerly direction until it empties into Lake 
Winnipeg; the St. Louis and other rivers rise 
in the same region and flow eastwardly into 
Lake Superior, which is the real source of the 
St. Lawrence, which empties into the Atlantic. 

The elevation at the source of the Mississippi 
is 1,600 feet and at the point where it leaves 
the southern boundary of the State 620 feet. 
The elevation at the source of the Red River of 
the North is the same as that of the Mississippi, 
1,600 feet, and where it leaves the State at its 
northern boundary 767 feet. The average ele- 
vation of the State is giveu at 1,275 feet, and 
its highest elevation in the Mesaba Range. 
2,200 feet, and its lowest, at Duluth, 602 feet. 



NICOLLET. 



In 1836 a French savant, Mr. Jean N. Nicol- 
let, visited Minnesota for the purpose of ex- 
ploration. He was an astronomer of note and 
had received a decoration of the Legion of 
Honor, and had also been attached as professor 
to the Royal College of "Louis Le Grand." He 
arrived in Minnesota, July 2C>, 1836, bearing let- 
ters of introduction, and visited Fort Snelling, 
whence he left with a French trader, named 
Fronchet, to explore the sources of the .Missis- 
siiqii. He entered the Crow Wing river, and 
by the way of Gull river and Cull lake, he en- 
tered Leech lake. The Indians were disap- 



pointed when they found he had no presents 
for them, and that he spent the most of his 
time looking at the heavens through a tube, 
and they became unruly and troublesome. The 
Rev. Mr. Boutwell, whose mission house was 
on the lake, learning of the difficulty, came lo 
the rescue, and a very warm friendship sprang 
up between the men. No educated man who 
has not experienced the desolation of having 
been shut up among savages and rough unlet- 
tered voyageurs for a long time can appreciate 
the pleasure of meeting a cultured and refined 
gentleman so unexpectedly as Mr. Rout well 
encountered Nicollet, and especially when lie 
was able to render him valuable aid. 

From Leech lake Nicollet went to Lake 
Itasca with guides and packers. He pitched 
his tent on Schoolcraft island in the lake, 
where he occupied himself for some time in 
making astronomical observations. He con- 
tinued his explorations beyond those of School- 
craft and Lieutenant Allen, and followed up 
the rivulets that entered the lake, thoroughly 
exploring its basin or watershed. 

He returned to Fort Snelling in October and 
remained there for some time, studying Dakota. 
He became the guest of Gen. Henry H. Sibley 
at his home in Mendota for the winter. Gen- 
eral Sibley, in speaking of him, says: 

"A portion of the winter following was spent 
by him at my house and it is hardly necessary 
to state that I found in him a most instructive 
companion. His devotion to his studies was 
intense and unremitting, and I frequently ex- 
postulated with him upon his imprudence in 
thus overtasking the strength of his delicate 
frame, but without effect." 

Nicollet went to Washington after his tour 
of 1X36-7, aud was honored with a commission 
from the United States government to make 
further explorations, and John C. Fremont was 
detailed as his assistant. 

Under his new appointment Nicollet and his 
assistant went up the Missouri in a steamboat 
to Fort Pierre; thence he traveled through the 
interior of Minnesota, visiting the red pip" 
stone quarry, Devil's lake and other important 
localities. On this tour he made a map of the 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



19 



country — the first reliable and accurate one 
made, which, together with his astronomical 
observations, were invaluable to the country. 
His name has been perpetuated by giving it to 
one of Minnesota's principal counties. 



MISSIONS. 



The missionary period is one full of interest 
in the history of the State of Minnesota. The 
devoted people who sacrifice all the pleasures 
and luxuries of life to spread the gospel of 
Christianity among the Indians are deserving 
of all praise, no matter whether success or fail- 
ure attends their efforts. The Dakotas and 
Chippewas were not neglected in this respect. 
The Catholics were among them at a very early 
day and strove to convert them to Christianity. 
These worthy men were generally French 
priests and daring explorers, but for some rea- 
son, whether it was want of permanent support 
or an individual desire to rove, I am unable to 
say, but they did not succeed in founding any 
missions of a lasting character among the 
Dakotas before the advent of white settle- 
ment. The devout Romanist, Shea, in his in- 
teresting history of Catholic missions, speak 
ing of the Dakotas, remarks that, "Father Me- 
nard had projected a Sioux mission; Mar- 
quette, Allouez, Druillettes, all entertained 
hopes of realizing it, and had some intercourse 
with that nation, but none of them ever suc- 
ceeded in establishing a mission." Their work, 
however, was only postponed, for at a later 
date they gained and maintained a lasting foot- 
hold. 

The Protestants, however, in and after 1820, 
made permanent and successful ventures in 
this direction. After the formation of the 
American Fur Company, Mackinaw became 
the chief point of that organization. In June, 
1820, the Rev. Mr. Morse, father of the inventor 
of the telegraph, came to Mackinaw and 
preached the first sermon that was delivered in 
the Northwest. He made a report of his visit 
to the Presbyterian missionary society in New 
York, which sent out parties to explore the 



field. The Rev. W. M. Terry, with his wife, 
commenced a school at Mackinaw in 1823 and 
had great success. There were sometimes as 
many as two hundred pupils at the school, rep- 
resenting many tribes of Indians. There are 
descendants of the children who were educated 
at this school now in Minnesota who are citi- 
zens of high standing and are indebted to this 
institution for their education and position. 

In the year 1830 a Mr. Warren, who was then 
living at La Pointe, visited Mackinaw to obtain 
a missionary for his place, and not being able 
to secure an ordained minister he took back 
with him Mr. Frederick Ayre, a teacher, who, 
being pleased with the place and prospect, re- 
turned to Mackinaw, and in 1831, with the Rev. 
Sherman Hall and wife, started for La Pointe, 
where they arrived August 30, and established 
themselves as missionaries, with a school. 

The next year Mr. Ayre went to Sandy lake 
and opened another school for the children of 
voyageurs and Indians. In 1832 Mr. Boutwell, 
after his tour with Schoolcraft, took charge of 
tlic school at La Pointe, and in 1833 he removed 
to Leech lake and there established the first 
mission in Minnesota, west of the Mississippi. 

From his Leech lake mission he writes a let- 
ter in which he gives such a realistic account 
of his school and mission that one can see 
everything that is taking place, as if a pano- 
rama was passing before his eyes. He takes .1 
cheerful view of his prospects, and gives a com- 
prehensive statement of the resources of the 
country in their natural state. If space al- 
lowed, I would like to copy the whole letter; 
lint as he speaks of the wild rice in referring to 
the food supply, I will say a word about it, as 
I deem it one of Minnesota's most important 
natural resources. 

In 1857 I visited the source of the Mississippi 
with the then Indian Agent for the Chippewas, 
and traveled hundreds of miles in the upper 
river. We passed through endless fields of 
wild rice, and witnessed its harvest by the 
Chippewas, which is a most interesting and 
picturesque scene. They tie it in sheaves with 
straw before it is ripe enough to gather to 
prevent the wind from shaking out the grains, 
and when it has matured they thresh it with 



20 



HISTORY OP MINNESOTA. 



sticks into their canoes. We estimated that 
there were about one thousand families of the 
Chippewas, and that they gathered about twen- 
ty-five bushels for each family, and we saw 
that in so doing they did not make any impres- 
sion whatever on the crop, leaving thousands 
of acres of the rice to the geese and ducks. 
Our calculations then were, that more rice 
grew in Minnesota each year, without any cul- 
tivation, than was produced in South Carolina 
as one of the principal products of that State; 
and I may add that it is much more palatable 
and nutritious as a food than the white rice of 
the Orient or the South. There is no doubt 
that at some future time it will be utilized to 
the great advantage of the State. 

Mr. Boutwell's Leech lake mission was in all 
things a success. 

In 1834 the Rev. Samuel W. Tond and his 
brother, Gideon H. Pond, full of missionary en- 
thusiasm, arrived at Fort Snelling in the 
month of May. They consulted with the In- 
dian agent, Major Taliaferro, about the best 
place to establish a mission and decided upon 
Lake Calhoun, where dwelt small bands of 
Dakotas, and with their own hands erected a 
house and located. 

About the same time came the Rev. T. H. 
Williamson, M. D., under appointment from 
the American Board of Commissioners of For- 
eign Missions, to visit the Dakotas, and ascer- 
tain what could be done to introduce Christian 
instruction among them. He was reinforced by 
the Rev. J. D. Stevens, missionary, Alexander 
Huggins, farmer, and their wives, Miss Sarah 
I'oage and Miss Lucy Stevens, teachers. They 
arrived at Fort Snelling in May, 1835, and were 
hospitably received by the officers of the gar- 
rison, the Indian Agent and Mr. Sibley, then a 
young man who had recently taken charge of 
the trading post at Mendota. 

From this point Rev. Mr. Stevens and family 
proceeded to Lake Harriet in Hennepin county 
and built a suitable house. Dr. Williamson 
and wife, Mr. Huggins and wife, and Miss 
Poage went to Lac qui Parle, where they were 
welcomed by Mr. Renville, a trader at that 
point, after whom the county of Renville is 
named. 



The Rev. J. D. Stevens acted as chaplain of 
Fort Snelling in the absence of a regularly ap- 
pointed officer in that position. 

In 1S37 the mission was strengthened by the 
arrival of the Rev. Stephen R. Riggs, a grad- 
uate of Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, and 
his wife. After remaining a short time at Lake 
Harriet Mr. and Mrs. Riggs went to Lac qui 
Parle. 

In 1837 missionaries sent out by the Evan- 
gelical Society of Lausanne, Switzerland, ar- 
rived and located at Red Wing and Wapa- 
shaw's Villages on the Mississippi, and about 
the same time a Methodist mission was com- 
menced at Kaposia, but they were of brief 
duration and soon abandoned. 

In 183C a mission was established at Poke- 
gama, among the Chippewas, which was quite 
successful, and afterwards, in 1812 or 1813, 
missions were opened at Red Lake, Shakopee 
and other places in Minnesota. During the 
summer of 1843 Mr. Riggs commenced a mis- 
sion station at Traverse des Sioux, which at- 
tained considerable proportions and remained 
until overtaken by white settlement, about 
1854. 

Mr. Riggs and Dr. Williamson also estab- 
lished a mission at the Yellow Medicine agency 
of the Sioux, in the year 1852, which was about 
the best equipped of any of them. It consisted 
of a good house for the missionaries, a large 
boarding and school house for Indian pupils, a 
neat little church, with a steeple and a bell, and 
all the other buildings necessary to a complete 
mission outfit. 

These good men adopted a new scheme of 
education and civilization, which promised to 
be very successful. They organized a govern- 
ment among the Indians, which they called the 
llazelwood Republic. To become a member of 
this civic body it was necessary that the appli- 
cant should cut off his long hair and put on 
white men's clothes, and it was also expected 
that he should become a member of the church. 
The Republic had a written Constitution, a 
president and other officers. It was in 185C, 
when I first became acquainted with this insti- 
tution, and I afterwards used its members to 
great advantage, in the rescue of captive 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



21 



women and the punishment of one of the lead 
ers of the Spirit Lake massacre, which occurred 
in the northwestern portion of Iowa, in the 
year 1857, the particulars of which I will relate 
hereafter. The name of the president was Paul 
Ma-za-cu-ta-ma-ni, or the man who shoots metal 
as he walks, and one of its prominent members 
was John Otherday, called in Sioux, An-pay- 
tu-tok-a-cha, both of whom were the best 
friends the whites had in the hour of their 
great danger in the outbreak of 1862. It was 
these two men who informed the missionaries 
and other whites at the Yellow Medicine 
agency of the impending massacre and assisted 
sixty-two of them to escape before the fatal 
blow was struck. 

What I have said proves that much good at- 
tended the work of the missionaries in the way 
of civilizing some of the Indians, but it has 
always been open to question in my mind if any 
Sioux Indian ever fully comprehended the 
basic doctrines of Christianity. I will give an 
example which had great weight in forming my 
judgment. There was among the pillars of 
the mission church at the Yellow Medicine 
agency, or as it was called in Sioux, Pajutazee, 
an Indian named Ana-wang-mani, to which the 
missionaries had prefixed the name of Simon. 
He was an exceptionally good man and promi- 
nent in all church matters. He prayed and 
exhorted and was looked upon by all interested 
as a fulfillment of the success of both the 
church and the Republic. Imagine the conster- 
nation of the worthy missionaries when one 
day he announced that a man who had killed 
his cousin some eight years ago had returned 
Prom the Missouri and was then in a neighbor- 
ing camp, and that it was his duty to kill him 
to avenge his cousin. The missionaries argued 
with him, quoted the Bible to him, prayed with 
him; in fact, exhausted every possible means to 
prevent him carrying out his purpose, but all 
to no effect. He would admit all they said, as- 
sured them that he believed everything they 
contended for, but he would always end with 
the assertion that "he killed my cousin, and I 
must kill him." This savage instinct was too 
deeply imbedded in his nature to be overcome 
by any teaching of the white man, and the re- 



sult was that he got a double-barreled shotgun 
and carried out his purpose, the consequence of 
which was to nearly destroy the church and 
the republic. He was, however, line to the 
whites all through the outbreak of lsiiU. 

When the Indians rebelled the entire mission 
outfit at Pajutazee was destroyed, which prac- 
tically put an end to missionary effort in Min- 
nesota, but did not in the least lessen the ardor 
of the missionaries. I remember meeting Dr. 
Williamson soon after the Sioux were driven 
out of the State, and supposing, of course, that 
he had given up all hope of Christianizing 
them, I asked him where he would settle, and 
what he would do. He did not hesitate a mo- 
ment, and said that he would hunt up the rem- 
nant of his people and attend to their spiritual 
wauls. 

Having given a general idea of the mission- 
ary efforts that were made in Minnesota, I will 
say a word about the Indians. 



INDIANS. 



The Dakotas — or, as they were afterwards 
called, the Sioux — and the Chippewas were 
splendid races of aboriginal men. The Sioux 
who occupied Minnesota were about eight 
thousand strong, men, women and children. 
They were divided into four principal bands, 
known as the M'day-wa-kon-tons, or Spirit Lake 
Villagers; the Wak-pay-ku-tays, or Leaf Shoot- 
ers, from their living in the timber; the Si-si- 
tons, and the Wak-pay-tons. There was also a 
considerable band, known as the Upper Si-si- 
tons, who occupied the extreme upper waters 
of the Minnesota river. The Chippewas num- 
bered about seven thousand eight hundred, di- 
vided as follows: At Lake Superior, whose 
agency was at La l'ointe, Wisconsin, about six- 
teen hundred and fifty; on the upper Missis 
sippi, on the east side, about three thousand 
four hundred and fifty; of Fillagers, fifteen hun- 
dred and fifty, and at Red lake, eleven hundred 
and thirty. The Sioux and Chippewas hail 
been deadly enemies as far back as anything 
was known of them and kept up continual war- 
fare. The Winnebagoes, numbering about 
fifteen hundred, were removed from the neu- 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



tral ground in I own to Long Prairie in 
Minnesota, in L848, and in 1 s.~>4 were again 
removed to Blue Earth county, near the 
present site of Mankato. While Minne- 
sota was a Territory its western boundary 
extended to the Missouri river, and on that 
river, both east and wesl of it, were numerous 
wild and warlike bands of Sioux, numbering 
many thousands, although no accurate census 
of them had ever been taken. They were the 
Tetons, Yanktons, Cut heads, Yanktonais and 
others. These Missouri Indians frequently vis 
ited Minnesota. 

The proper name of these Indians is Dakota. 
and they know themselves only by that name, 
but the Chippewas of Lake Superior, in speak- 
ing of them, always called them "Nadowes- 
sioux," which in their language signifies enemy. 
The traders had a habit when speaking of any 
tribe in the presence of another, and especially 
of an enemy, to designate them by some name 
that would not be understood by the listeners, 
as they were very suspicious. When speaking 
of the Dakotas they used the last syllable of 
Nadowessioux, "Sioux," until the name at- 
tached itself to them, and they have always 
since been so called. 

Charlevoix, who visited Minnesota in 1721, in 
his history of New France, says: "The name 
Sioux that we give these Indians is entirely of 
our own making, or rather it is the last two 
syllables of the name Nadowessioux, as many 
nations call them." 

The Sioux live in tepees or circular conical 
tents supported by poles, so arranged as to 
leave an opening in the top for ventilation and 
for the escape of smoke. These were, before 
the advent of the whites, covered with dressed 
buffalo skins, but more recently with a coarse 
cotton tent cloth, which is preferable on ac- 
count of its being much lighter to transport 
from place to place, as they are almost con- 
stantly on the move, the tents being carried by 
the squaws. There is no more comfortable 
habitation than the Sioux tepee to be found 
among the dwellers in tents anywhere. A fire 
is made in the center for either warmth or 
cooking purposes. The camp kettle is sus 
pended over it, making cooking easy and 



cleanly. In the winter, when the Indian family 
settles down to remain any considerable time, 
1 bey select a river bottom where there is timber 
or chaparral, and set up the tepee; then they 
ciii i he long grass or bottom cane and stand it 
up against the outside of the lodge to the thick- 
ness of about twenty inches, and you have a 
very warm and cozy habitation. 

The wealth of the Sioux consists very largely 
in his horses, and his subsistence is the game 
of the forest and plains and the fish and wild 
rice of the lakes. Minnesota was an Indian 
paradise. It abounded in buffalo, elk, moose, 
deer, beaver, wolves, and in fact nearly all wild 
animals found in North America. It held upon 
its surface eight thousand beautiful lakes, 
alive with the finest of edible fish. It was 
dotted over with beautiful groves of the sugar 
maple, yielding quantities of delicious sugar, 
and wild rice swamps were abundant. An in- 
habitant of this region with absolute liberty, 
and nothing to do but defend it against the en- 
croachments of enemies, certainly had very 
little more to ask of his Creator. But he was 
not allowed to enjoy it in peace. A stronger 
race was on his trail, and there was nothing left 
for him but to surrender his country on the 
best terms he could make. Such has ever been 
the case from the beginning of recorded events, 
and judging from current operations there has 
been no cessation of the movement. Why was 
not the world made big enough for homes for 
all kinds and colors of men and all characters 
of civilization? 

As the white man progressed towards the 
West and came in contact with the Indians, it 
became necessary to define the territories of 
the different tribes to avoid collision between 
them and the newcomers as much as possible. 
To accomplish this end, Governor Clark of Mis 
souri and Governor Cass of Michigan, on the 
19th of August, 1825, convened at Prairie du 
Chien, a grand congress of Indians, represent- 
ing the Dakotas, Chippewas (then called Ojib- 
ways), Sauks. Foxes, Menomonies, Iowas, Win- 
nebagoes, Pottawattamies and Ottawas, and 
it was determined by treaties among them 
where the dividing lines between their coun- 
tries should be; which partition gave the Chip- 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



pewas ;i large part of what is now Wisconsin 
and Minnesota, and the Dakota* lands to the 
west of them. But it soon became apparenl 
that these boundary lines between the Dakotas 
and the Chippewas would not be adhered to, 
and Governor Cass and Mr. T. L. McKenney 
were appointed commissioners to again con- 
vene the Chippewas. This time they met at 
Fond du Lac, and there, on the 5th of August, 
L826, another treaty was entered into, which, 
with the exception of the Fort Snelling treaty. 
was the first one ever made on the soil of Min- 
nesota. By this treaty the Chippewas, among 
other things, renounced all allegiance to or con- 
nection with Great Britain and acknowledged 
the authority of the United States. These 
treaties were, however, rather of a preliminary 
character, being intended more tor the purpose 
of arranging matters between the tribes than 
making concessions to the whites, although the 
whites were permitted to mine and carry away 
metals and ores from the Chippewa country by 
the treaty of Fond du Lac. 

The first important treaty made with the 
Sioux, by which the white men began to obtain 
concessions of lands from them, was on August 
29, 1837. This treaty was made at Washing! on 
through Joel R. Poinsette, and to give an idea 
of how little time and few words were spent in 
accomplishing important ends I will quote the 
first article of this treaty. 

"Article I. The chiefs and braves represent- 
ing the parties having an interest therein cede 
to the United States all their land east of the 
Mississippi river and all their islands in said 
river." 

The rest of the treaty is confined to the con- 
sideration to be paid and matters of that na- 
ture. 

This treaty extinguished all the Dakota title 
in lands east of the Mississippi river in Minne- 
sota and opened the way for immigration on 
all that side of the Mississippi. Immigra- 
tion was not long in accepting the invitation, 
for between the making of the treaty in 1837, 
and the admission of the State of Wisconsin 
into the Union in 1848, there had sprung into 
existence in that State west of the St. Croix the 
towns of Stillwater, St. Anthony, St. Paul. Ma 



line, Areola and other lesser settlements, 
which were all left in .Minnesota when Wiscon- 
sin adopted the St. Croix as its western bound 
a iy. 

Most important, however, of all the treaties 
that opened up the lands of Minnesota to set- 
tlement were those of 1851, made at Traverse 
des Sioux and Mendota, by which the Sioux 
ceiled to the United States all their lands in 
Minnesota and Iowa, except a small reserva- 
tion for their habitation, situated on the upper 
waters of the Minnesota river. 

The Territory of Minnesota was organized in 
1819 and immediately presented to the world 
a very attractive field for immigration. The 
most desirable lands in the new Territory were 
on the west side of the Mississippi, but the title 
to them was still in the Indians. The whites 
could not wait until this was extinguished, but 
at once began to settle on the land lying on the 
west bank of the Mississippi, north of the north 
line of Iowa, and in the new Territory. These 
settlements extended up the Mississippi river 
as far as Saint Cloud, in what is now Stearns 
county, and extended up the Minnesota river as 
far as the mouth of the Blue Earth river, in the 
neighborhood of Mankato. These settlers were 
all trespassers on the lands of I lie Indians, but 
a little thing like that never deterred a white 
American from pushing his fortunes towards 
I he setting sun. It soon became apparent that 
the Indians must yield to the approaching tidal 
wave of set t lenient, and measures were taken 
to acquire their lands by the United States. In 
1851 Luke Lea, then commissioner of the gen- 
eral land office, and Alexander Ramsey, then 
( rovernor of the Territory of Minnesota, and ex- 
officio superintendent of Indian affairs, were 
appointed commissioners to treat with the In- 
dians at Traverse des Sioux, and after much 
feasting and talking a treaty was completed 
and signed, July 23, 1851, between the United 
States and the Sisseton and Wahpeton bands 
of Sioux, whereby these bands ceded to the 
United States a vast tract of land lying in Min- 
nesota and Iowa, and reserved for their future 
occupation a strip of land on the Upper Min- 
nesota, ten miles wide on each side id' the cen- 
ter line of the river. For this cession they were 



24 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



io be paid $1,665, I, which w;is to 1"- paid a 

part in cash 1<i liquidate debts, etc., and five 
per cent per annum on the balance tin- fifty 
years, the interest to he paid annually, partly 
in cash iiinl partly in funds tin- agriculture, 
civilization, education and in goods of various 
kinds; these payments, when completed, were 
in satisfy both principal ami interest, the |"'l 
icy and expectation of the government being 
that at the end of fiftj years the Indians would 
be civilized and self-sustaining. 

Amendments were made to iliis treaty in tin' 
Senate, and it was not fully completed and pro- 
claimed until February 24, L853. 

Al st instantly after the execution of tliis 

treaty, and on August •">. ls.11. another treaty 
was negotiated by the same commissioners 
with two other hands of Sioux in .Minnesota. 
the Meda\ wa kui tons and Wak-pay koo-tays. 

By this I real \ these ha lids ceded to the United 

States all their hinds in the T( rritory of Min- 
nesota or State of Iowa, for which they were 
to be paid $1,410,000, very much in the same 
way that was provided in I he last -named treaty 
with the Sissetons and Wak-pax Ions. This 
treaty also was amended by i hi' Senate and not 
fully perfected until February 24, 1853. Both 
of these treaties contained the provision that 
'•The laws of t he United States, prohibiting tic 
introduction and sale of spirituous liquors in 
the Indian country, shall he in full force and 
eifecl throughout the Territory hereby ceded 
and lying in Minnesota, until otherwise di- 
rected by Congress or the President of the 
United States." I mention this feature of the 
treaty because it gave rise to much litigation 
as to whether the treaty making power had au- 
thority to legislate for settlers on the ceded 
lands of the United Stales. The power was sus- 
tained. These treaties practically obliterated 
the Indian title from the lands composing- Min- 
nesota, and its extinction brings us to the ter- 
ritorial period. 



TERRITORIAL I'KRIOD. 

It must be kept in mind that during the per- 
iod which we have been attempting to review. 



the people who inhabited what is now Minne- 
sota wen- subject to a great many different 
governmental jurisdictions. This, however, 
did not in any way concern them, as they did 
not. as a general thing, know or care anything 
about such matters, but as it may be inter- 
esting to the retrospective explorer to be in- 
formed on the subject I will briefly present it. 
Minnesota has 1 wo sources of parentage. The 
part of it lying west of the Mississippi was part 
of the Louisiana purchase made by President 
Jefferson from Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, 
and the part east of that river was part of 
the Northwest Territory ceded by Virginia in 
1784 to the United States. I will give the suc- 
cessive changes of political jurisdiction, begin- 
ning on the west side of the river. 

First it was part of New Spain, and Spanish. 
It was then purchased from Spain by France, 
and became French. On June 30, 1803, it he- 
came American, by purchase from France, and 
was part of the Province of Louisiana, and so 
remained until March 26, 1S04, when an act 
was passed by Congress creating the Territory 
of Orleans, which included all of the Louisiana 
purchase south of the 33d degree of north lati- 
tude. This act gave the Territory of Louisiana 
a government and called all the country north 
of it the District of Louisiana; this was to he 
governed by the Territory of Indiana, which 
had In en created in 1800, out of the Northwest 
Territory, and had its seat of government at 
Vincennes, on the Wabash. 

On June 4. 1812, the District of Louisiana 
was erected into the Territory of Missouri, 
where we remained until June 28, 1834, when 
all the public lands of the United States lying 
west of the Mississippi, north of the State of 
Missouri, and south of the British line, were, 
by act of Congress, attached to the Territory of 
Michigan; we remained under this jurisdiction 
until April 10, 1830, when the Territory of Wis- 
consin was created. This law went into effect 
July 3, 1830, and Wisconsin took in our terri- 
tory lying west of the Mississippi, and there it 
remained until June 12, 183S; then the Terri- 
tory of Iowa was created, taking us in and 
holding us until the State of Iowa was ad- 
milted into the Union, on March :',. 1S4.">. which 



EISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



left us without any government west of 1 he- 
Mississippi. 

The pari of Minnesota lying east of the Miss- 
issippi was originally part of the Northwest 
Territory. < »n May 7, 1S00, it became part of 
the Indiana Territory and remained so until 
April 26, 183G, when it became part of the Wis 
cousin Territory; it so continued until May 29, 
1848, when Wisconsin entered the Union as a 
State with the St. Croix river for its western 
boundary. By this arrangement of the western 
boundary of Wisconsin, all the territory west 
of the St. < Jroix and east of the Mississippi. like 
that west of the river, was left without any 
government at all. 

One of the curious results of the many gov- 
ernmental changes which the western part of 
Minnesota underwent is illustrated in the resi- 
dence of (Jen. Henry II. Sibley at Mendota. In 
1834. at the age of twenty two. Mr. Sibley com- 
menced his residence at Mendota. as the agent 
of the American Fur Company's establishment. 
At this point Mr. Sibley built the first private 
residence that was erected in Minnesota. It 
was a large, comfortable dwelling, constructed 
of the blue limestone found in the vicinity, 
with commodious porticos on the river front. 
The house was built in 1835-6, and was then in 
the Territory of Michigan. Mr. Sibley lived in 
it successively in Michigan, Wisconsin. Iowa 
and the Territory and State of Minnesota. He 
removed to St. Paul in the year 1862. Every 
distinguished visitor who came to Minnesota 
in the early days was entertained by Mr. Sibley 
in his hospitable old mansion, and, together 
with its genial, generous and refined propri- 
etor, it contributed much towards planting the 
seeds of those aesthetic amenities of social life 
that have so generally flourished in the later 
days of Minnesota's history, and -;iven it its 
deserved prominence among the States of the 
West. Tin- house still stands, and has been 
occupied at different times since its founder 
abandoned it. as a < 'atholic institution of some 
kind and an artist's summer school. The word 
Mendota is Sioux, and means the meeting of 
tin- water's. 

It was the admission of Wisconsin into the 
Union in 1848 that brought about the organiza- 



tion of i he Territory of Minnesota. The peculiar 
situation in which all the people residing wesi 
of the Si. Croix found themselves set them to 
devising ways and means to obtain some kind 
of government to live under. It was a de- 
batable question whether the remnant of Wis 
cousin which was left over when the State was 
admit teil carried with ii the Territorial govern- 
ment, or whether if was a in man's land, and 
different views were entertained on the sub- 
ject. The question was somewhat embarrassed 
by the fact that the Territorial Governor, Gov- 
ernor Dodge, had been elected to the Senate 
of the United States from the new State, and 
i he Territorial secretary. Mr. John Catlin, who 
would have become Governor ex-officio when a 
vacancy occurred in the office of Governor, re- 
sided in Madison, and the delegate to Congress, 
Mr. John II. Tweedy, had resigned, so even if 
the Territorial government had in law survived 
there seemed to be no one to represent and ad- 
minister it. 

There was no lack of ability among the in- 
habitants of the abandoned remnant of Wis 
consin. In St. Paul dwelt Henry M. Rice, Louis 
Roberts, J. W. Simpson, A. L. Larpenteur, 
David Lambert, Henry Jackson, Vetal Guerin, 
David Herbert. Oliver Rosseau, Andre Cod 
trey. Joseph Rondo, James R. Clewell, Edward 
I'helan. William <1. Carter anil many others. 
In Stillwater, and on the St. Croix, were Mor- 
ton S. Wilkinson. Henry L. Moss. John Mc- 
Kusick, Joseph R. Brown and others. In Men- 
dota resided Henry II. Sibley. In St. Anthony, 
William R. Marshall; at Fori Snelling, Frank- 
lin Steele. I could name many others, but the 
above is a representative list. It will be ob- 
served that many of them are French. 

An initial meeting was held in St. Paul, in 
duly of 1848, at Henry Jackson's trading house, 
to consider the matter, which was undoubtedly 
the first public meeting ever held in Minnesota. 
( )n 1 he 5th of August, in the same year, a simi- 
lar meeting was held in Stillwater, and out of 
these meetings grew a call for a convention to 
lie held at Stillwater. August 26, which was 
held accordingly. There were present about 
sixty delegates. 

At this meeting a letter from Hon. John Cat- 



26 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



lin, the secretary of Wisconsin Territory, was 
read, giving it as his opinion that the Terri- 
torial government of Wisconsin still existed, 
and that if a delegate to Congress was elected 
he would he admitted to a seat. 

A memorial to Congress was prepared, set- 
ting forth the peculiar situation in which the 
people of the remnant found themselves and 
praying relief in the organization of a Terri- 
torial government. 

During the session of this convention there 
was a verhal agreement entered into hetween 
the members to the effect that when the new 
Territory was organized the capital should be 
at St. Paul, the penitentiary at Stillwater, the 
university at St. Anthony, and the delegate to 
Congress should be taken from Mendota. I 
have had reason to assert publicly this fact on 
former occasions, and so far as it relates to the 
university and the penitentiary my statement 
was questioned by Minnesota's greatest his- 
torian, Rev. Edward D. Neill, in a published 
article, signed "Iconoclast," but I sustained my 
position by letters from surviving members of 
the convention, which I published, and to 
which no answer was ever made. The same 
statement can be found in William's History of 
St. Paul, published in 1876, at page 182. 

The result of this convention was the selec- 
tion of Henry H. Sibley as its agent or dele- 
gate, to proceed to Washington and present the 
memorial and resolutions to the United States 
authorities. It was, curiously enough, stipu- 
lated that the delegate should pay his own ex- 
penses. 

Shortly after this event the Hon. John H. 
Tweedy, who was the regularly elected dele- 
gate to Congress from the Territory of Wiscon- 
sin, no doubt supposing his official career was 
terminated, resigned his position, and Mr. John 
Catlin, claiming to be the Governor of the Ter- 
ritory, came to Stillwater, and issued a procla- 
mation, October 9, 1848, ordering a special elec- 
tion to fill the vacancy caused by the resigna- 
tion of Delegate Tweedy. The election was 
held, October 30. Mr. Henry H. Sibley and Mr. 
Henry M. Rice became candidates, neither car- 
ing very much about the result, and Mr. Sibley 
was elected. There was much doubt enter- 



tained as to the delegate being allowed to take 
his seat, but in November he proceeded to 
Washington and was admitted, after consid- 
erable discussion. 

March 3, 1849, the delegate succeeded in 
passing an act organizing the Territory of Min- 
nesota, the boundaries of which embraced all 
the territory between the western boundary of 
Wisconsin and the Mississippi river, and also 
all that was left unappropriated on the admis- 
sion of the State of Iowa, which carried our 
western boundary to the Missouri river, and 
included within our limits, a large part of what 
is now North and South Dakota. 

The passage of this act was the first step 
in the creation of Minnesota. No part of the 
country had ever before borne that name. The 
word is composed of two Sioux words, "Minne," 
which means water, and "Sota," which means 
the condition of the sky when fleecy white 
clouds are seen floating slowly and quietly over 
it. It has been translated "skytinted," giving 
to the word Minnesota the meaning of sky- 
tinted water. The name originated in the fact 
that in the early days the river now called Min- 
nesota used to rise very rapidly in the spring 
and there was constantly a caving in of the 
banks, which disturbed its otherwise pellucid 
waters, and gave them the appearance of the 
sky when covered with the light clouds I have 
mentioned. The similarity was heightened by 
the current keeping the disturbing element 
constantly in motion. There is a town just 
above St. Peter, called Kasota, which means 
cloudy sky — not stormy or threatening, but a 
sky dotted with fleecy white clouds. The best 
conception of this word can be found by pour- 
ing a few drops of milk into a glass of clear 
water and observing the cloudy disturbance. 

The principal river in the Territory was then 
called the St. Peter's river, but the name was 
changed to the Minnesota. 



EDUCATION. 



An act organizing a territory simply creates 
a government for its inhabitants, limiting and 
regulating its powers, executive, legislative 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



and judicial, and in our country they resemble 
each other in all essential features. But the 
organic act of Minnesota contained one provis- 
ion never before found in any that preceded it. 
It had been customary to donate to the Terri- 
tory and future State one section of land in 
each surveyed township for school purposes, 
and section sixteen had been selected as the 
one, but in the Minnesota act the donation was 
doubled, and sections sixteen and thirty-six in 
each township were reserved for the schools, 
which amounted to one-eighteenth of all the 
lands in the Territory, and when it is under- 
stood that the State, as now constituted, con- 
tains 84,287 square miles, or about 53,943,379 
acres of land, it will be seen that the grant was 
princely in extent and incalculable in value. 
No other State in the Union has been endowed 
with such a magnificent educational founda- 
tion. I may except Texas, which came into the 
Union, not as a part of the United States pub- 
lic domain, but as an independent republic, 
owning all its lands, amounting to 237,504 
square miles, or 152,002,560 acres — a vast em- 
pire in itself. I remember hearing a distin- 
guished Senator, in the course of the debate 
on its admission into the Union, describe its 
immensity by saying, "A pigeon could not fly 
across it in a week." 

It affords every citizen of Minnesota great 
pride to know that, under all phases and condi- 
tions of our Territory and State, whether in 
prosperity or adversity, the school fund has 
always been held sacred, and neither extrava- 
gance, neglect nor peculation has ever assailed 
it, but it has been husbanded with jealous care 
from time to time since the first dollar was real- 
ized from it until the present, and has accumu- 
lated until the principal is estimated at $20,- 
000,000. The State Auditor, in his last report 
of it, says: 

"The extent of the school land grant should 
ultimately be about 3.000,000 acres, and as the 
average price of this land heretofore sold is 
about $5.96 per acre, the amount of principal 
alone should yield the school fund not less 
than $17,000,000. To this must be added the 
amount received from sales of timber, and for 
lease and royalty of mineral lands, which will 



not be less than $3,000,000 more. It is not prob- 
able that the average sale price of this land 
will be reduced in the future, but it may in- 
crease, especially in view of the improved 
method of sale inaugurated by the new land 
law." 

The general method of administering the 
school fund is, to invest the proceeds arising 
from the sale of the lands, and distribute the in- 
terest among the counties of the State accord- 
ing to the number of children attending school; 
the principal always to remain untouched and 
inviolate. 

Generous grants of land have also been made 
for a State university, amounting to 92,558 
acres. Also for an agricultural college to the 
extent of 100,000 acres, which two funds have 
been consolidated, and together they have ac- 
cumulated to the sum of $1,159,790.73, all of 
which is securely invested. 

The State has also been endowed with 500,- 
000 acres of land for internal improvements, 
and all its lands falling within the designa- 
tion of swamp lands. An act of Congress, of 
February 26, 1857, also gave it ten sections of 
land for the purpose of completing public 
buildings at the seat of government, and all 
the salt springs, not to exceed twelve, in the 
State, with six sections of land to each spring, 
in all seventy-two sections. The twelve salt 
springs have all been discovered and lo- 
cated, and the lands selected. The salt 
spring lands have been transferred to the re- 
gents of the University, to be held in trust 
to pay the cost of a geological and natural his- 
tory survey of the State. It is estimated that 
the salt spring lands will produce, on the same 
valuation as the school lands, the sum of $300,- 
000. Large sums will also be gained by the 
State from the sale of timber stumpage and 
the products of its mineral lands. Some idea 
of the magnitude of the fund to be derived 
from the mineral lands of the State may be 
learned from the report of the State Auditor 
for the year 1896, in which he says that dur- 
ing the years 1895-6 there has been received 
from and under all mineral leases, contracts 
and royalties, $170,128.83. 

It will be seen from this statement that the 



28 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



educational interests of Minnesota are largely 
provided for without resort to direct taxation, 
although up to the present time that means 
of revenue has, to some extent, been utilized 
to meet the expenses of the grand system pre- 
vailing throughout the State. 



THE FIRST TERRITORIAL GOVERN- 
MENT. 

The organization of the Territory was com- 
pleted by the appointment of Alexander Ram- 
sey, of Pennsylvania, as Governor; Aaron 
Goodrich as Chief Justice, and David Cooper 
and Bradley B. Meeker as Associate Justices, 
C. K. Smith as Secretary, Joshua L. Taylor as 
Marshal, and Henry L. Moss as District At- 
torney. 

May 27, 1849, the Governor and his family 
arrived in St. Paul, but there being no suitable 
accommodations for them, they became the 
guests of Honorable Henry H. Sibley at Men- 
dota, whose hospitality, as usual, was never 
failing, and for several weeks there resided the 
four men who have been perhaps more prom- 
inent in the development of the State than any 
others, Henry H. Sibley, Alexander Ramsey, 
Henry M. Rice and Franklin Steele, all of 
whom have been honored by having important 
counties named after them and by being chosen 
to fill high places of honor and trust. 

The Governor soon returned to the capital, 
and on the 1st of June, 1849, issued a proc- 
lamation declaring the Territory dulj organ- 
ized. June 11, he issued a second proclama- 
tion, dividing the Territory into three Judicial 
Districts. The County of St. Croix, which was 
one of the discarded counties of Wisconsin, 
and embraced the present county of Ramsey, 
was made the First District. The Second was 
composed of the county of La Pointe (another 
of the Wisconsin counties) and the region 
north and west of the Mississippi river, and 
north of the Minnesota, and on a line running 
due west from the headwaters of the Minne- 
sota to the Missouri. The country west of the 
Mississippi and south of the Minnesota formed 
the Third District. The Chief Justice was as- 



signed to the First, Meeker to the Second and 
Cooper to the Third, and courts were ordered 
held in each district as follows: At Stillwater, 
in the First District, on the second Monday; 
at the Falls of St. Anthony on the third Mon 
day, and at Mendota on the fourth Monday in 
August. 

A census was taken of the inhabitants of the 
Territory in pursuance of the requirements of 
the organic act, with the following result : I 
give here the details of the census, as it is in- 
teresting to know what inhabited places there 
were in the Territory at this time, as well as 
the number of inhabitants. 



Total in 
Names of Places. habitants. 

Stillwater 609 

Lake St. Croix 211 

Marine Mills 173 

St. Paul 840 

Little Canada and St. Anthony 571 

Crow Wing and Long Prairie 350 

( )sakis Rapids 133 

Falls of St. Croix 16 

Snake River 82 

La Pointe County 22 

Crow Wing 174 

Big Stone Lake and Lac qui Parle 68 

Little Rock 35 

Prairieville 22 

Oak Grove 23 

Black Dog Village 18 

Crow Wing, East Side 70 

Mendota 122 

Red Wing Village 33 

Wabasha and Root River 114 

Fort Snelling 38 

Soldiers, women and children in Forts. . . 317 

Pembina .' 637 

.Missouri River 85 

Total 4,764 



On the 7th of July the Governor issued a 
proclamation dividing the Territory into seven 
council districts, and ordering an election for 
a delegate to Congress, nine councillors and 
eighteen representatives to constitute the first 
Territorial Legislature, to be held on the 1st of 
August. At this electioD Henry II. Sibley was 
again chosen delegate to Congress. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



29 



COURTS. 

The courts were held in pursuance of the 
Governors' proclamation, the first one conven- 
ing at Stillwater. But before I relate what 
there occurred I will mention an attempt that 
was made by Judge Irwin, one of the Terri- 
torial Judges of Wisconsin, to hold a term in 
St. Croix county, in 1842. Joseph R, Brown, 
of whom I shall speak hereafter, as one of the 
brightest of Minnesota's early settlers, came to 
Fort Snelling as a fifer boy in the regiment 
that founded and built the fort in 1819, was 
discharged from the army about 182(i, and had 
become clerk of the courts in St. Croix county. 
He had procured the Legislature of Wisconsin 
to order a court in his county for some reason 
only known to himself, and in 1842 Judge Ir- 
win came up to hold it. He arrived at Fort 
Snelling and found himself in a country which 
indicated that disputes were more frequently 
settled with tomahawks than by the principles 
of the common law. The officers of the fort 
could give him no information, but in his wan- 
derings he found Mr. Norman W. Kittson, who 
had a trading house near the Falls of Minne- 
haha. Kittson knew Clerk Brown, who was 
then living on the St. Croix, near where Still- 
water now stands, and furnishing the Judge a 
horse, directed him how to find his clerk. After 
a ride of more than twenty miles Brown \v;is 
discovered, but no preparations had been made 
for a court. The Judge took the first boat 
down the river a disgusted and angry man. 

After the lapse of five years from this futile 
attempt the first court actually held within the 
bounds of Minnesota was presided over by 
Judge Dunn, then Chief Justice of the Terri- 
tory of Wisconsin. The court convened at Still- 
water in June, 1847, and is remembered not 
only as the first court ever held in Minnesota, 
but on account of the trial of an Indian chief 
named ''Wind," who was indicted for murder. 
Samuel J. Crawford, of Mineral roint, was ap- 
pointed prosecuting attorney for the term, and 
Ben C. Eastman, of Plattville, defended the 
prisoner. "Wind" was acquitted. This was 
the first jury trial in Minnesota. 

It should be stated that Henry H. Sibley 



was in fact the first judicial officer who ever 
exercised the functions of a court in Minne- 
sota. While living at St. Peters (Mendota) he 
was commissioned a justice of the peace in 
18.35 or 1836 by Governor Chambers, of Iowa, 
with a jurisdiction extending from twenty 
miles south of Prairie du Chien to the British 
boundary on the north, to the White river on 
the west and the Mississippi on the east. His 
prisoners could only be committed to Prairie 
du Chien. Boundary lines were very dimly de- 
fined in those days, and minor magistrates 
were in no danger of being overruled by supe- 
rior courts, and tradition asserts that the writs 
of Sibley's court often extended far over into 
Wisconsin and other jurisdictions. One case 
is recalled which will serve as an illustration. 
A man named I'halen was charged with having 
murdered a sergeant in the United States Ar- 
my in Wisconsin. He was arrested under a 
warrant from Justice Sibley's Iowa court, ex- 
amined and committed to Prairie du Chien, and 
no questions asked. Lake Phalen, from which 
the City of St. Paul derives part of its water 
supply, is named after this prisoner. Whatever 
jurisdictional irregularities Justice Sibley may 
have indulged in it is safe to say that no injus- 
tice ever resulted from any decision of his. 

The first courthouse that was erected within 
the present limits of Minnesota was at Still- 
water, in the year 1847. A private subscription 
was taken up and f 1,200 was contributed. This 
sum was supplemented by a sufficient amount 
to complete the structure from the treasury of 
St. Croix county. It was perched on the top 
of one of the high bluffs in that town, and 
much private and judicial blasphemy has been 
expended by exhausted litigants and judges in 
climbing to its lofty pinnacle. I held a term 
in it ten years after its completion. 

This courthouse fell within the First Judi- 
cial District of the Territory of Minnesota un- 
der the division made by Governor Ramsey, 
and the first court under his proclamation was 
held within its walls, beginning the second 
Monday of August, 1849. It was presided over 
by Chief Justice Goodrich, assisted by Judge 
Cooper, the term lasting one week. There 
were thirty-five cases on the calendar. The 



3° 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



grand jury returned thirty indictments, one 
for assault with intent to maim, one for per- 
jury, four for selling liquor to the Indians and 
four for keeping gambling houses. Only one 
of these indictments was tried at this term, 
and the accused, Mr. William D. Phillips, be- 
ing a prominent member of the bar, and there 
being a good deal of fun in it, I will give a brief 
history of the trial and the defendant. 

Mr. Phillips was a native of Maryland and 
came to St. Paul in 1848. He was the first dis- 
trict attorney of the county of Kamsey. He 
became quite prominent as a lawyer and poli- 
tician,' and tradition has handed down many 
interesting anecdotes concerning him. The in- 
dictment charged him with assault with intent 
to maim. In an altercation with a man he had 
drawn a pistol on him, and his defense was 
that the pistol was not loaded. The witness 
for the prosecution swore that it was, and 
added that he could see the load. The prisoner, 
as I he law then was, was not allowed to testify 
in his own behalf. He was convicted and fined 
$25. He was very indignant at the result, and 
explained the assertion of the witness, that he 
could see the load, in this way: He said he 
had been electioneering for Mr. Henry M. Rice, 
and from the uncertainty of getting his meals 
in such an unsettled country he carried crack- 
ers and cheese in the same pocket with his pis- 
tol, a crumb of which had gotten into the muz- 
zle, and the fellow was so scared when he. 
looked at the pistol that he thought it was 
loaded to the muzzle. 

Another anecdote which is related of him 
shows that he fully understood the funda- 
mental principle which underlies success in the 
practice of law — that of always charging for 
services performed. Mr. Henry M. Rice had 
presented him with a lot in St. Paul, upon 
which to build an office, and when he presented 
his next bill to Mr. Rice there was in it a 
charge of four dollars for drawing the deed. 

The Territorial courts, as originally consti- 
tuted, being composed of only three judges, the 
trial terms were held by single judges, and the 
Supreme Court by all three sitting in bank 
where they would review each other's decisions 
on appeal. 



When the State was admitted into the Union 
the judiciary was made to consist of a Chief 
Justice and two Associate Justices, who con- 
stituted the Supreme Court, with a jurisdiction 
exclusively appellate and a District Judge for 
each district. As the State has grown in pop- 
ulation and business the Supreme Court judges 
have been increased to five and the judicial dis- 
tricts to eighteen in number, two of which, the 
Second and the Fourth, have six judges each; 
the Eleventh three; the First and Seventh two 
each, and the remainder one each. 

The practice adopted by the Territorial Leg- 
islature was generally similar to that of the 
New York code, with such differences as were 
necessary to conform it to a very new country. 
From a residence in the Territory and State 
of forty-six years, nearly all of which has been 
spent either in practice at the bar or as a judge 
on the bench, I take pride in saying that the 
judiciary of Minnesota, in all its branches, both 
Territorial and State, has, during its fifty years 
of existence, equaled in ability, learning and 
integrity that of any State in the West, which 
is well attested by the seventy-one well filled 
volumes of its reported decisions. 

Nearly all of the old lawyers of Minnesota 
were admitted to practice at the first term held 
at Stillwater, among whom were Morton S. 
Wilkinson. Henry L. Moss, Edmund Rice, Lo- 
renzo A. Babcock, Alexander Wilkin, Bushrod 
W. Lott and many others. Of the whole list 
Mr. Moss is the sole survivor. 



FIRST TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE. 

The first Legislature convened at St. Paul 
<in Monday, the 3d of September, 1849, in the 
Central House, which, for the occasion, served 
for both capitol and hotel. The quarters were 
limited, but the Legislature was small. The 
Council had nine members and the House of 
Representatives eighteen. The usual officers 
were elected, and on Tuesday afternoon both 
heiises assembled in the dining room of the 
hotel. Prayer was offered by the Rev. E. D. 
Mill, and Governor Ramsey delivered his mes- 
sage, which was well received both at home 
and abroad. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



31 



It may be interesting to give the names of 
the men constituting this body and the places 
of their nativity. The Councillors were: 

James S. Norris Maine. 

Samuel Burkleo Delaware. 

William H. Forbes Montreal. 

James McBoal Pennsylvania. 

David B. Loomis Connecticut. 

John Rollins Maine. 

David Olmsted Vermont. 

William Sturgis Upper Canada. 

Martin McLeod Montreal. 

The Members of the House were: 
Joseph W. Furber. . .New Hampshire. 

James Wells New Jersey. 

M. S. Wilkinson New York. 

Sylvanus Trask New York. 

Mahlon Black Ohio. 

Benjamin W. Bronson Michigan. 

Henry Jackson Virginia. 

John J. Duvey New York. 

Parsons K. Johnson Vermont. 

Henry F. Setzer Missouri. 

William R. Marshall Missouri. 

William Dugas Lower Canada. 

Jeremiah Russell Lower Canada. 

L. A. Babcock Vermont. 

Thomas A. Holmes Pennsylvania. 

Allen Morrison Pennsylvania. 

Alexis Bailly Michigan. 

Gideon H. Pond Connecticut. 

David Olmstead was elected president of the 
council, with Joseph R. Brown as secretary. 
In the House Joseph W. Furber was elected 
speaker and W. D. Phillips clerk. 

Many of these men became very prominent 
in the subsequent history of the State, and it is 
both curious and interesting to note the varied 
sources of their nativity, which shows that 
they were all of that peculiar and picturesque 
class known as the American pioneer. 

The work of the first Legislature was not ex- 
tensive, yet it performed some acts of historical 
interest. It created eight counties, named as 
follows: Itasca, Wabashaw, Dakota, Wahnah- 
tah, Mankato, Pembina, Washington, Ramsey 
and Benton. The spelling of some of these 
names has since been changed. 



A very deep interest was manifested in the 
school system. A joint resolution was passed 
ordering a slab of red pipestone from the fa- 
mous quarry to be sent to the Washington 
Monument association, which was done, and 
now represents Minnesota in that lofty monu 
ment at the National Capital. 

This was done at the suggestion of Henry 
H. Sibley, who furnished the stone. It will be 
remembered that I have referred to the visit 
of George Catlin, the artist, to Minnesota in 
1835, and that his report was unreliable. 
Among other things, he says that he was the 
first white man who had visited this quarry, 
and induced geologists to name the pipestone 
"Catlinite." Mr. Sibley, in his communication 
to the Legislature presenting this slab, in an- 
swer to this pretension, says: 

"In conclusion, I would beg leave to state 
that a late geological work of high authority 
by Dr. Jackson designates this formation as 
< 'atlinite upon the erroneous supposition that 
Mr. George Catlin was the first white man who 
had ever visited that region; whereas it is no- 
torious that many whites had been there and 
examined the quarry long before he came to 
the country. The designation, therefore, is 
clearly improper and unjust. The Sioux term 
for the stone is Eyan-sha (red stone), by which 
I conceive it should be known and classified." 

In my opinion the greatest achievement of 
the first Legislature was the incorporation of 
the Historical Society of Minnesota. It estab- 
lished beyond question that we had citizens, 
at that early day, of thought and culture. One 
would naturally suppose that the first legisla- 
tive body of an extreme frontier territory 
Mould be engaged principally with saw logs, 
peltries, town-sites and other things material; 
but in this instance we find an expression of 
the highest intellectual prevision — the desire 
to record historical events for posterity, even 
before their happening; and what affords even 
greater satisfaction to the present citizens of 
Minnesota is that from the conception of this 
grand idea there have never been men wanting 
to appreciate its advantages and carry it out. 
As a result our State now possesses its greatest 
intellectual and moral treasure in a library of 
historical knowledge of sixty-three thousand 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



volumes, which is steadily increasing, a val- 
uable museum of curiosities and a gallery of 
historical paintings. 

This Legislature recommended a device for 
a great seal. It represented an Indian family 
with lodge and canoe, encamped, a single. white 
man visiting them, and receiving from them 
the calumet of peace. The design did not meet 
with general approval, and nothing came of it. 
The next winter Governor Ramsey and the 
delegate to Congress prepared a seal for the 
Territory, the design of which was the Falls 
of St. Anthony in the distance, a farmer plow- 
ing land, his gun and powder horn leaning 
against a newly-cut stump, a mounted Indian, 
surprised at the sight of the plow, lance in 
hand, fleeing toward the setting sun, with the 
Latin motto, "Quae sursum volo videre,'' I wish 
to see what is above. A blunder was made by 
the engraver in substituting the word "Quo" 
for "Quae" in the motto, which destroyed its 
meaning. Some time after it was changed to 
the French motto, "L'Etoile du Nord,'' Star of 
the North, and thus remains until the present 
time. 

While speaking of seals I will state that the 
seal of the Supreme Court was established 
when the first term of the court convened in 
1858. The design adopted was a female figure 
representing the Goddess of Liberty holding 
the evenly balanced scales of justice in one 
hand and a sword in the other, with the some- 
what hackneyed motto, "Fiat justitia ruat 
coelum," let justice be done if the heavens fall. 
I remember that soon after it appeared some 
one asked one of the judges what the new 
motto meant, and he jocularly answered, 
"Those who fie at justice will rue it when we 
seal 'em." 

The seal was changed to the same device as 
that of the State, with the same motto and the 
words, "Seal of the Supreme Court, State of 
Minnesota." 



IMMIGRATION. 



When the first Legislature convened the 
Governor, on the second day of the session — 
September 4, 1849 — delivered his message. It 



was a well-timed document, and admirably ex- 
pressed to attract attention to the new Terri- 
tory. After congratulating the members upon 
the enviable position they occupied as pioneers 
of a great prospective civilization, which would 
carry the American name and American insti- 
tutions, by the force of superior intelligence, 
labor and energy, to untold results, he, among 
other things, said: 

"I would advise you, therefore, that your 
legislation should be such as will guard equal- 
ly the rights of labor and the rights of prop- 
erty, without running into ultraisms on either 
hand; as will recognize no social distinctions 
except those which merit and knowledge, re- 
ligion and morals unavoidably create; as will 
suppress crime, encourage virtue; give free 
scope to enterprise and industry; as will 
promptly and without delay administer to and 
supply all the legitimate wants of the people — 
laws, in a word, in the proclamation of which 
will be kept steadily in view the truth, that 
this Territory is designed to be a great State, 
rivaling in population, wealth and energy her 
sisters of the Union, and that consequently all 
laws not merely local in their objects should 
be framed for the future as well as the pres- 
ent. * * * * 

"Our Territory, judging from the experience 
of the few months since public attention was 
called to its many advantages, will settle rap- 
idly. Nature has done much for us. Our pro- 
ductive soil and salubrious climate will bring 
thousands of immigrants within our borders; 
it is of the utmost moment that the foundation 
of our legislation should be healthful and solid. 
A knowledge of this fact will encourage tens 
of thousands of others to settle in our midst, 
and it may not be long ere we may with truth 
be recognized throughout the political and the 
moral world as indeed the 'Polar Star' of the 
republican galaxy. * * * * 

"No portion of the earth's surface perhaps 
combines so many favorable features for the 
settler as this Territory; watered by the two 
greatest rivers of our continent, the Missouri 
sweeping its entire western border, the Missis 
sippi and Lake Superior making its eastern 
frontier, and whilst the States of Wiscon- 
sin and Iowa limit us on the south the 
possessions of the Hudson Bay Company 
present the only barrier to our domain 
on the extreme north; in all embracing an 
area of lGG.OOO square miles, a country 
sufficiently extensive to admit of the erec- 
tion of four States of the largest class, each 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



33 



enjoying; in abundance most of the elements of 
future greatness. Its soil is of the most pro- 
ductive character, yet our northern latitude 
saves us from malaria and death, which in 
other climes are so often attendant on a liberal 
soil. Our people, under the healthful and brac- 
ing influences of this northern climate, will 
never sink into littleness, but continue to pos- 
sess the vigor and the energy to make the most 
of their natural advantages." 

This message, while not in the least exag- 
gerating the actual situation, was well calcu- 
lated to attract immigration to this region. It 
was written in a year of great activity in that 
line. Gold had been discovered in California, 
and the thoughts of the pioneer were attracted 
in that direction, and it needed extraordinary 
attractions to divert the stream to any other 
point. It was extensively quoted in the eastern 
papers, and much commented upon, and suc- 
ceeded beyond all expectations in awakening- 
interest in the Northwest. It was particularly 
attractive in Maine, where the people were ex- 
perienced in lumbering, and many of them 
nocked to the valley of the St. Croix and the 
Falls of St. Anthony and inaugurated the lum- 
bering business which has since grown to such 
immense proportions. The St. Croix, the Rum 
and the upper Mississippi rivers, with their 
tributaries, soon responded to the music of the 
woodsman's axe. Saw mills were erected, and 
Minnesota was soon recognized among the 
great lumber producing regions. 

Although immigration continued to be quite 
rapid during the years 1850 - 54,it was not until 
about the year 1S55 that it acquired a volume 
that was particularly noticeable. The reader 
must remember that Minnesota was on the ex- 
treme border of America and that it repre- 
sented to the immigrant only those attractions 
incident to a new territory possessing the gen- 
eral advantages of good climate, good soil and 
good government as far as developed. There 
was no gold, no silver, or other special induce- 
ments. The only way of reaching it was by 
land on wheels, or by the navigable rivers. 
There was not a railroad west of Chicago. To 
give an idea of the rush that came in 1855 I 
quote from the History of St. Paul by J. Fletch- 



er Williams, for many years secretary of the 
Minnesota Historical Society, published in 
1870. Speaking of the immigration of 1855, he 

says : 

"Navigation opened on April 17, the old 
favorite, 'War Eagle.' leading the van with 
eigb.1 hundred and fourteen passengers. The 
papers chronicled the immigration that spring- 
as unprecedented. Seven boats arrived in one 
day, each having brought to Minnesota from 
two hundred to six hundred passengers. Most 
of these came through Saint Paul and diverged 
hence to other parts of the Territory. It was 
estimated by the packet company that they 
brought thirty thousand immigrants into Min- 
nesota that season. Certainly 1855, '56 and '57 
were the three great years of immigration in 
our Territorial days. Nothing like it has ever 
been seen." 

In the early fifties the Mississippi up to and 
even for a long distance above the Falls of SI. 
Anthony was navigable for steamboats. A 
fine boat, the "Ans. Northrup," once pene- 
trated as far as the Falls of Pokegama, where 
she was dismantled and her machinery trans- 
ported to the Ked River of the North, and four 
or five boats regularly navigated the stream 
above the falls. 

The Minnesota river, during all the period 
of our early history, and far into the sixties, 
was navigable for large steamers up to Man- 
kato, and in one instance a steamboat carrying 
a large cargo of Indian goods was taken by 
Culver and Farrington, Indian traders, as far 
as the Yellow Medicine river and into that 
river, so that the goods were delivered at the 
agency situated a few miles above its mouth. 
I mention this fact because a wonderful change 
has taken place in the watercourses and lakes 
of the State in the past twenty odd years, 
which I propose to account for on the only the- 
ory that seems to me to meet the conditions. 
Up to about twenty years ago, as soon as the 
ice went out of the Minnesota river in the 
spring, it would rise until it overran its banks 
and covered (lie bottoms for miles on each side 
of its channel, and would continue capable of 
carrying large steamers until late in August. 
Since that time it has rarely been out of its 



34 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



banks, and navigation of its waters has en- 
tirely ceased. The same phenomenon is ob- 
servable in relation to many of our lakes; hun- 
dreds of I lie smaller ones have entirely dried 
u]}. and most of the larger ones have become re- 
duced in depth several feet. The rainfall has 
not been lessened, but if anything has in- 
creased. My explanation of the change is, that 
in the advance of civilization the water sheds 
or basins of these rivers and lakes having been 
plowed up, the rainfall which formerly found 
its way quickly into the streams and lakes over 
the hard natural surface is now absorbed into 
the soft and receptive ground, and is returned 
by evaporation. This change is generally at- 
tributed to the destruction of forests, but in 
this case that cause has not progressed suffi- 
ciently to have produced the result, and our 
si reams do not rise in mountains. 

The trend of immigration toward Minnesota 
encouraged the organization of transportation 
companies by boat and stage for passengers 
and freight, and by 185G it was one of the 
liveliest communities to be found anywhere, 
and curious as it may seem, this era of pros- 
perity was the cause of Minnesota's first great 
calamity. 

The object of the immigrant is, always, the 
betterment of his condition. He leaves 
old communities, where competition in all 
branches of industry is great, in the hope of 
"getting in on the ground floor," as we used to 
say 7 , when he arrived in a new country, and 
every American, and in fact everybody else, 
wants to get rich by head work instead of hand 
work, if he can. The bulk of the immigration 
that first came to Minnesota remained in the 
cities; there was no agriculture worthy of the 
name. I may say that we had nothing at all to 
sell, and everything we needed, to buy. I can 
remember that as late as 1853, and even after, 
we imported hay in bales from Dubuque to 
feed the horses of St. Paul when there were 
millions of tons of it growing in the Minnesota 
v Hey, within a few miles of the city. 

In the progress of emigration to the West the 
Territories have always presented the greatest 
attractions. The settler expects to have a bet- 
ter choice of lands, and at original government 



prices. Society and politics are both in the 
formative condition, and very few emigrants 
omit the latter consideration from their hopes 
and expectations. In fact political preferment 
is a leading motive with many of them. 

Under the influence of this great rush of 
immigration it was very natural that the pre- 
vailing idea should be that lands would greatly 
increase in value in the near future, and every- 
body became a speculator. Towns and cities 
sprang into existence like mushrooms in a 
night. Scarcely any one was to be seen without 
a town-site map in his hands, the advantages 
and beauties of which fictitious metropolis 
he was ready to present in the most elo- 
quent terms. Everything useful was neglected, 
and speculation was rampant. There were no 
banks of issue, and all the money that was in 
the country was borrowed in the East. In or- 
der to make borrowing easy, the law placed no 
restrictions on the rate of interest, and the 
usual terms were three per cent per month, 
with the condition that if the principal was 
not paid at maturity the interest should be in- 
creased to five per cent per month. Every- 
body was in debt on these ruinous terms, 
which, of course, could not last long before the 
inevitable explosion. The price of lands, and 
especially town lots, increased rapidly, and at- 
tained fabulous rates; in fact some real prop- 
erty in St. Paul sold in 1856 for more money 
than it has brought at any time since. 



THE PANIC OF 1857. 

The bubble burst by the announcement of 
the failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and 
Trust Company, which reached St. Paul Au- 
gust 24, 1857. The failure of this financial in- 
stitution precipitated a panic all over the coun- 
try. It happened just on the recurrence of the 
twenty year period which has marked the pe- 
cuniary disasters of the country, beginning 
with 1837. Its effects on Minnesota were ex- 
tremely disastrous. The eastern creditors de- 
manded their money, and the Minnesota debt- 
ors paid as long as a dollar remained in the 
country, when all means of borrowing more 
being cut off a most remarkable condition of 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



35 



things resulted. Cities like St. Paul and St. 
Anthony, having a population of several thou- 
sands each, were absolutely without money to 
carry on the necessary commercial functions. 
A temporary remedy was soon discovered, by 
every merchant and shopkeeper issuing tickets 
marked "good for one dollar at my store," and 
every fractional part of a dollar down to five 
cents. This device tided the people for a while, 
but scarcely any business establishment in the 
Territory weathered the storm, and many peo- 
ple who had considered themselves beyond the 
chance of disaster were left without resources 
of any kind and hopelessly bankrupt. The dis- 
tress was great and universal, but it was 
bravely met, and finally overcome. 

Dreadful as this affliction was to almost 
every one in the Territory, it turned out to be 
a blessing in disguise. It compelled the people 
to abandon speculation and seek honest labor 
in the cultivation of the soil and the develop- 
ment of the splendid resources that generous 
nature had bestowed upon the country. Farms 
were opened by the thousands, everybody went 
to work, and in ten or a dozen years Minnesota 
had a surplus of forty millions of bushels of 
wheat with which to supply the hungry world. 



LAND TITLES. 



All the lands of Minnesota were the property 
of the United States, and title to them could 
only be obtained through the regular methods 
of pre-emption, town-site entry, public sales or 
private entries. One event occurred on August 
14, 1848, which illustrates so clearly the way 
in which western men protect their rights that 
I will relate it. The recognized price of public 
lands was one dollar and a quarter per acre, 
and all pioneer settlers were willing to pay 
that sum, but when a public sale was made 
any one could bid whatever he was willing to 
pay. Under the administration of President 
Polk a public sale of lands was ordered to be 
made at the land office at St. Croix Falls of 
lands lying partly in Minnesota and partly in 
Wisconsin. The lands advertised for sale in- 
cluded those embraced in St. Paul and St. An- 
thony. The settlers selected Henry H. Sibley 



as their trustee to buy their lands for them, 
to be conveyed to them subsequently. It was 
a high offense under the United States laws 
to do any act that would tend to prevent per- 
sons bidding at the sales. Mr. Sibley appeared 
at the sale, and bid off every tract of land that 
was occupied by an actual settler at the price 
of $1.25 per acre. The General, in a paper he 
read before the Historical Society, says of this 
affair: 

"I was selected by the actual settlers to bid 
off portions of the land for them, and when 
the hour for business arrived my seat was uni- 
versally surrounded by a number of men with 
huge bludgeons. What was meant by the pro- 
ceeding I could, of course, only surmise, but I 
would not have envied the fate of the individ- 
ual who would have ventured to bid against 
me." 

It has always been assumed in the far West, 
and I think justly, that the pioneers who first 
settle the land and give it value should enjoy 
every advantage that flows from such priority, 
and the violation of laws that impede such op- 
portunity is a very venial offense. So univer- 
sal was the confidence reposed in Mr. Sibley 
that many of the French settlers, the title to 
whose lands became vested in him by his pur- 
chase at this sale, insisted that they should re- 
main in him, and he found it quite difficult in 
many cases to get them to accept deeds from 
him. 



THE FIRST NEWSPAPER. 

Although the first message of the Governor 
went a great way in introducing Minnesota to 
the world, she was particularly fortunate in 
the establishment of her first newspapers. The 
Stillwater convention of 1S4S, of which I have 
spoken, first suggested to Dr. A. Randall, who 
was an attache of Dr. Owen's geological corps, 
then engaged in a survey of this region by or- 
der of the government, the necessity of a news- 
paper for the new Territory. He was possess 1 
of the means and enterprise to accomplish the 
then rather difficult undertaking, and was 
promised ample support by leading men of the 
Territory. He returned to his home in Cincin- 



36 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



nati in the fall of 1848, intending to purchase 
the plant and atari the paper that year, but the 
navigation of the rivers closed earlier than 
usual, and he was foiled in his attempt. He, 
however, set up his press in Cincinnati, and 
got out a number or two of his paper there. It 
was then called the "Minnesota Register," and 
appeared as of the date of April 27, 1849, and 
as printed in Saint Paul. It was in fact printed 
in Cincinnati about two weeks earlier. It con- 
tained valuable articles from the pens of Henry 
H. Sibley and Henry M. Rice. These articles, 
added to Dr. Randall's extensive knowledge of 
the country, made the first issue a great local 
success. It was the first Minnesota paper ever 
published, and bears date just one day ahead 
of the Pioneer, subsequently published by 
James M. Goodhue, which was actually printed 
in the Territory. Dr. Randall did not carry out 
his intention, but was caught in the California 
vortex, and did not return to Minnesota. 

James M. Goodhue, of Lancaster, Wisconsin, 
who was editing the Wisconsin Herald, when 
he heard of the organization of the new Terri- 
tory, immediately decided to start a paper in 
St. Paul, and as soon as navigation opened in 
the spring of 1849 he came up with his press 
and type. He met with many difficulties and 
obstructions, necessarily incident to such a 
venture in a new place, but he succeeded in is- 
suing the first number of his paper April 28, 
1849. His first inclination was to call his paper 
the "Epistle of St. Paul," but on sober reflec- 
tion he was convinced that the name might 
shock the religious sensibilities of the com- 
munity, especially as he did not possess many 
of the attributes of our patron saint, and he de- 
rided to call it "The Minnesota Pioneer." 

In his first issue he speaks of his establish- 
ment of that day as follows: "We print and 
issue this number of the Pioneer in a building 
through which out-of-doors is visible by more 
than five hundred apertures; and as for our 
type, it is not safe from being pied on the gal- 
leys by the wind." The rest can be imagined. 

Mr. Goodhue was just the man to be the ed- 
itor of the first paper of a frontier territory. 
He was energetic, enterprising, brilliant, bold 
and belligerent. He conducted the Pioneer 



with great success and advantage to the Ter- 
ritory until the year 1851, when he published 
an article on Judge Cooper, censuring him for 
absenteeism, which is a very good specimen of 
the editorial style of that day. He called the 
Judge "a sot," "a brute," "an ass," "a profli- 
gate vagabond," and closed his article in the 
following language: "Feeling some resent- 
ment for the wrongs our Territory has so long 
suffered by these men, pressing upon us like a 
dispeusation of wrath — a judgment — a curse — 
a plague, unequaled since Egypt went lousey, 
we sat down to write this article with some 
bitterness, but our very gall is honey to what 
they deserve." 

In those fighting days such an article could 
not fail to produce a personal collision. A 
brother of Judge Cooper resented the attack, 
and in the encounter between them Goodhue 
was badly stabbed and Cooper was shot. 
Neither wound proved fatal at the time, but it 
was always asserted by the friends of each 
combatant, and generally believed, that they 
both died from the effect of these wounds. 

The original Minnesota Pioneer still lives in 
the Pioneer Press of to-day, which is published 
iu St. Paul. It has been continued under sev- 
eral names and edited by different men, but 
has never been extinguished or lost its relation 
of lineal descent from the original Pioneer. 

Nothing tends to show the phenomenal 
growth of Minnesota more than the fact that 
this first newspaper, issued in 1849, has been 
followed by the publication of five hundred and 
seventy-nine papers, which is the number now 
issued in the State according to the last offi- 
cial list obtainable. They appear daily, weekly 
and monthly, in nearly all written languages, 
English, French, German, Swedish, Norwe- 
gian, Danish, Bohemian, and one in Icelandic, 
published in Lyon county, Minnesota. 



BANKS. 

With the first great increase in immigration 
business was necessarily enlarged, and banking 
facilities became a necessity. Dr. Charles W. 
Borup, a Danish gentleman who was engaged 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



$7 



in the fur trade at Lake Superior as an agent 
for the American Fur Company, and Mr. 

Charles IT. < takes, a native of Vermont, came 
t<> Saint Paul and established a bank in 1853. 
They were brothers-in-law, having married sis- 
ters. They did a private banking business un- 
der the name of Borup & (takes, which adapted 
itself to the needs of the community, including 
real estate, and almost any other kind of ven- 
ture that offered. The house of Borup & (takes 
was the first banking establishment in Minne- 
sota, and weathered all the financial storms 
that swept over the Territory in its early his- 
tory. They were followed by Truman M. 
Smith, hut he went down in the panic of 1857- 
58. Then came Bid well's Exchange Bank, fol- 
lowed by C. H. Parker and A. Vance Brown. 
Mackubin & Edgerton opened a hank in 1854, 
which was the ancestor of the present Second 
National Bank, and always legitimate. I think 
Erastus S. Edgerton may justly be said to have 
been the most successful banker of all that 
were early engaged in the business. An enu- 
meration of the banks and bankers which suc- 
ceeded each other in these early times would 
be more appropriate in a narrative of the local- 
ities where they operated than in a general 
history of the State. It is sufficient to say that 
nearly if not all of them succumbed to the 
financial disasters in 1857-58, and there was 
no banking worthy of the name until the pas- 
sage of the banking law of July 20, 1858. But 
this act was a mere makeshift to meet a finan- 
cial emergency, and it was not based upon 
sound financial principles. It allowed the or- 
ganization of hanks and the issue of circulating 
bank notes upon securities that were capable 
of being fraudulently over-valued by misrepre- 
sentation, and, as a matter of course, advan- 
tage was taken of the laxity of the provisions 
of the law, and securities which had no intrin- 
sic value in tact, were made available as the 
foundation of bank issues, with the inevitable 
result of disaster. 

Another method of furnishing the commu- 
nity with a circulating medium was resorted 
lo by a law of July 2:'., 1858. The State Aud- 
itor was authorized to issue his warrant for 
any indebtedness which the State owed to any 



person in small sums, and the warrants were 
made lo resemble bank notes, and bore twelve 
per cent interest. The credit of the State was 
not sufficiently well established in I lie public 
confidence lo make these warrants, which were 
known as "State scrip," worth much over six- 
ty-five or seventy cents on the dollar. They 
were taken by the money-changers at that val- 
uation, and when the State made its first loan 
of $250,000 they were all redeemed in g.dd at 
par, wiih interest at twelve per cent. 

In this uncertain way the financial interests 
of the Territory were cared for until the break- 
ing out of the Civil War and the establishment 
of the National and State systems, which still 

exist. 

Another evidence of the growth of the Stale 
may be found in the fact that at the present 
time the State has within its limits banks in 
good standing as follows: Slate banks, one 
hundred and seventy-two in number, with a 
paid in capital stock of $6,73(i,80(t, and sixty- 
seven National banks with a capital stock paid 
in of |11,220,0()0. This statement does not in- 
clude either the surplus or the undivided prof- 
its of these banks, nor the capital employed 
by private banking concerns which do not fall 
under the supervision of the State, which lat- 
ter item can safely 1 stimated at #2,000,000. 



THE FUR TRADE. 



The first legitimate business of the Territory 
was the fur trade and the carrying business 
resulting therefrom. Prioi to the year 1842 
the Northwestern Fur Company occupied the 
territory which is now Minnesota. In 1S42 it 
sold out to, and was merged into, the American 
Fur Company, which was owned by I'. Choteau 
& Company. This company had trading stations 
ai Prairie du Chien and Mendota, Henry II. 
Sibley being their chief factor at the latter. The 
goods imported into the Red river settlements 
and the furs exported therefrom all came and 
went through the difficult and circuitous route 
by way of Hudson bay. This route was only 
navigable for about two months in the year on 
account of the ice. The catch of furs and buf- 



38 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



fain robes in thai region was practically mo- 
nopolized by the Hudson Bay Company. The 
American Fur Company soon became well es- 
tablished in the Northwest. In 1844 this com- 
pany sent Mr. Norman \V. Kittson from the 
"Mendota outfit" to establish a trading post at 
Pembina, just south of the British possessions, 
with the design of diverting some of the fur 
trade of that region in the direction of the nav- 
igable waters of the Mississippi. The com- 
pany, through Mr. Kittson, invested some 
$2,000 in furs at Pembina and had them trans- 
ported to Mendota in six Pembina carts, which 
returned loaded with merchandise of the char- 
acter needed by I lie people of that distant re- 
gion. This venture was the beginning of the 
fur trade with the Red River country, but did 
not prove a financial success. It entailed a loss 
of about fGOO, and similar results attended the 
next two years' operations, but the trade in- 
creased, notwithstanding the desperate efforts 
of the Hudson Pay Company to obstruct it. 
This company had enjoyed a monopoly of the 
trade without any outside interference for so 
long that it looked upon this new enterprise 
as a direct attack on its vested rights. But 
Mr. Kittson had faith in being able in the near 
future to work up a paying trade, and he per- 
severed. By the year 1850 the business had so 
far increased as to involve a consumption of 
goods to the extent of $10,000, with a return of 
furs to the amount of $15,000. Five years later 
the goods sent to Pembina amounted in value 
to $24,000 and the return of furs to $40,000. 
In 1851 the firm of Forbes & Kittson was or- 
ganized and also the "St. Paul outfit," to 
carry on the supply business. When St. Paul 
became of some importance, in 1849, the ter- 
minus and supply depot was removed to that 
point, and the trade rapidly increased in mag- 
nitude, making St. Paul one of the largest fur 
markets in America, second only to St. Louis. 
The trade of the latter city consisted mostly of 
buffalo robes, which was always regarded as a 
distinct branch of the business in contrast with 
that of fine furs. In the early days the Indians 
and a few professional trappers were about all 
who caught fur animals, but as the country 
became more settled the squatters added to 



their incomes by such trapping as their envi- 
ronment afforded. This increased the market 
at St. Paul by the addition of all Minnesota, 
which then included both of the Dakotas and 
Northern Wisconsin. 

The extent and value of this trade can bet- 
ter be understood by a statement of the in- 
crease of the number id' carts engaged in it be- 
tween 1S44 and 1858. In the first year men- 
tioned six carts performed all the required 
service, and in 1858 six hundred carts came 
from Pembina to St. Paul. After the year 1858 
the number of carts engaged in the traffic fell 
off, as a steamer had been put in operation on 
the Red river. This reduced the land transpor- 
tation to 216 miles, which had formerly been 
lis miles — J. C. & H. C. Burbank having estab- 
lished a line of freight trains connecting with 
the steamer. In 1867, when the St. Paul and 
Pacific Railroad reached St. Cloud, the cara- 
vans of carts ceased their annual visits t;> St. 
Paul. St. Cloud then became the terminus of 
the traffic until the increase of freight lines 
and the completion of the Northern Pacific 
Railroad to the Red river drove these most 
primitive of all transportation vehicles out of 
business. Another cause of the decrease in the 
fur trade was the imposition of a duty of 
t wenty the per cent on all dressed skins, which 
included buffalo robes, and from that time on 
robes that formerly came to St. Paul from the 
British possessions were diverted to Montreal. 

The extent and value of this trade to Minne- 
sota, which was then in its infancy, can easily 
be judged by a brief statement of its growth. 
in 1S44 il amounted to $1,400 and in 1863 to 
$250,000. All the money paid out for these 
furs, and large sums besides, would be ex- 
pended in St. Paul for merchandise in the 
shape of groceries liquors, dry goods, blankets, 
household utensils, guns and ammunition, and 
in fact every article demanded by the needs of 
a primitive people. Even threshers and mow- 
ers were included, which were taken apart and 
loaded on the return carts. This trade was the 
pioneer of the great commercial activity which 
now prevails. 

1 caniioi permit this opportunity to pass 
without describing the Bed river cart, and the 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



39 



picturesque people who used it, as their like 
will never be seen again. The inhabitants of 
the Pembina country were principally Chip- 
pewa half-breeds, with an occasional white 
man — prominently Joseph Rolette, of whom I 
shall hereafter speak, as the man who vetoed 
the capital removal bill, by running away with 
it iu 1857. Their principal business was hunt- 
ing (he buffalo in connection with small farm- 
ing, and defending themselves against the in- 
vasions of their hereditary enemies, the Sioux. 
They were a bold, free race, skilled in the arts 
of war, fine horsemen and good fighters. 

The Red river cart was a home invention. It 
was made entirely of wood and rawhide. It 
moved upon two wheels, of about a diameter 
of five feet six inches, with shafts for one ani- 
mal, horse or ox, generally the latter. The 
wheels were without tires, and their tread 
about three and a half or four inches wide. 
They would carry a load of six to eight hun- 
dred pounds, which would be protected by can- 
vas covers. They were especially adapted to 
the condition of the country, which was largely 
interspersed with swamps and sloughs, which 
were impassable for any other character of ve- 
hicle. Their lightness, the width of the sur- 
face presented by the wheel and the careful 
steps of the educated animal which drew them, 
enabled them to go where anything else would 
Hounder. The trail which they left upon the 
prairie was deeply cut, and remained for many 
years after they were abandoned. 

When a brigade of them was ready to leave 
Pembina for St. Paul it would be manned by 
one driver for four carts, the train being 
arranged in single file with each animal 
tied to the cart before it, so that one driver 
could attend to that number of carts. Their 
speed was about fifteen miles a day, which 
made the trip last about a month. When 
night overtook them they formed a circular 
corral with their carts, the shafts pointing in- 
ward, with the camp in the center, which made 
a strong fort in case of attack. The animals 
were allowed to graze on the outside, but were 
carefully watched to prevent a stampede. 
When they reached St. Paul they went into 
camp near some lake, and were a great source 



of interest to all the new comers. During their 
stay the town would be thronged with the men, 
who were dressed in varicolored costumes, al- 
ways including the sasli of Pembina, a beaut i 
ful girdle, giving them a most picturesque ap- 
pearance. The only truthful representation of 
these curious people that has been preserved 
is found in two full length portraits of Joe 
Rollette, one in the gallery of the Minnesota 
Historical Society and the other on the walls 
of the Minnesota Club in St. Paul, both of 
which are the gifts of a very dear friend of the 
original. 

During the progress of this peculiar traffic 
many people not connected with the estab- 
lished fur companies engaged in the Indian 
trade, prominently the firm of Culver & Far- 
rington, Louis Roberts and Nathan Myrick. I 
remember that Mr. John Farrington, of the 
above named firm, made an improvement in the 
construction of the Red river cart, by putting 
an iron box in the hub of the wheel, which 
prevented the loud squeaking noise they for- 
merly made, and so facilitated their movements 
that they carried a thousand pounds as easily 
as they had before carried eight hundred. 

The early fur trade in the Northwest, car- 
ried on by canoes and these rails, was very 
appropriately called by one of our first his- 
torians of Minnesota "The heroic age of Amer- 
ican commerce." 



PEMMIt'AX. 



One of the principal sources of subsistence 
of these frontier people in their long journeys 
through uninhabited regions was pemmican. 
This food was especially adapted to extreme 
northern countries, where, in the winter, it 
was sometimes impossible to make fires to cook 
with, and the means of transportation was by 
dog-trains, as it was equally good for man and 
beast. It was invented among the Hudson 
Bay people many years ago, and undoubtedly 
from necessity. It was made in this way: The 
meat of the buffalo, without the fat, was thor- 
oughly boiled and then picked into shreds or 
very small pieces. A sack was made of buffalo 



40 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



skin, with the hair on the outside, which would 
hold about ninety pounds of meat. A hole was 
then dug iu the ground of sufficient size to hold 
the sack. Ii was filled with the meat thus pre- 
pared, which was packed and pounded until it 
was as hard as it could be made. A kettle of 
boiling hot buffalo fat, in a fluid state, was 
then pound into it, until it was thoroughly 
permeated, every interstice from center to cir- 
cumference being filled, until it became a solid 
mass, perfectly impervious to the air, and as 
well preserved against decomposition as if it 
had been enclosed in an hermetically sealed 
glass jar. This made a most nutritious pre- 
paration of animal food, all ready for use 
by both man and dog. An ana lysis of this com- 
pound proved it to possess more nutriment to 
the pound weight than any other substance 
ever manufactured, and with a winter camp 
appetite it was a very palatable dish. Its great 
superiority over any other kind of food was 
the fact that it required no preparation and its 

portability. 

• 

TRANSPORTATION AND EXPRESS. 

With the increase of trade and business nat- 
urally came the need of greater transportation 
facilities, and the men to furnish I hem were 
not wanting. John C. Burbank, of St. Paul, 
may be said to have been the pioneer in that 
line, although several minor lines of stages 
and ventures in (he livery business preceded 
his efforts. The firms of Willoughby & Powers, 
Allen & Chase, M. < >. Walker & Company (of 
Chicago) and others were early engaged in this 
work. In 1854 the Northwestern Express Com- 
pany was organized by Burbank & Whitney, 
and in 1856 Captain Russell Blakeley suc- 
ceeded Mr. Whitney, and the express business 
became well established in Minnesota. In 
1858-59 Mr. Burbank got the mail contract 
down the river, and established an express line 
from St. Paul to Galena, in connection with 
the American Express Company, whose lines 
extended to Galena as its western terminus. 
Steamboats were used in summer and stages 
in winter. In the fall of 1859 the Minnesota 
Stage Company was formed, by a consolida- 



tion of the Burbank interests with those of 
Allen & Chase, and the line extended up the 
Mississippi to Saint Anthony and Crow Wiiij;-. 
Other lines and interests were purchased and 
united, and in the spring of 1800 Col. John L. 
Merriam became a member of the firm, and for 
more than seven years Messrs. Burbank. 
Blakeley & Merriam constituted the firm and 
carried on the express and stage business in 
Minnesota. The business increased rapidly, 
and in 1865 this firm worked over seven hun- 
dred horses and employed two hundred men. 

During this staging period the railroads 
from the East centered in Chicago, and grad- 
ually reached the Mississippi river from that 
point ; first at Rock Island, next at Dunleith, 
opposite Dubuque, then at Prairie du Cliien. 
next at Prairie La Crosse, each advance carry- 
ing them nearer Minnesota. The Prairie du 
Cliien extension was carried across the river 
at McGregor in Iowa, and thence up through 
Iowa and Southern Minnesota to Minneapolis 
and Saint Paul. In 1872 the Saint Paul and 
Chicago railroad was finished from St. Paul 
down the west bank of the Mississippi to Wi- 
nona, and was purchased by the Milwaukee 
and St. Paul Company, and by that company 
was, in 1873, extended still further down the 
river to La Crescent, opposite LaCrosse, which 
completed the connection with the east 
era trains. This road was popularly known as 
the "River road." Various other railroads were 
soon completed, covering the needs of the set- 
tled pari of the State, and the principal stage 
lines either withdrew to the westward or gave 
up their business. 

The growth in the carrying line has since 
been immense throughout the State, and may 
be judged when I say that there are now five 
strong daily lines to Chicago: The Burling- 
ton, the Omaha, the Milwaukee, the Wiscon- 
sin Central and the Chicago-Great Western, 
ami three transcontinental lines departing 
daily for the Pacific coast, the Northern Pa- 
cific, the Cieat Northern and the Sault Ste. 
Marie, connecting with the Canadian Pacific. 
Besides these prominent trains there are innu- 
merable lesser ones connecting with nearly 
every part of the State. More passenger trains 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



41 



arrive at, and depart from the St. Paul Union 
Depot than at any other point in the State. 
They aggregate one hundred and four in and 
the same number out every day. Many — per- 
haps the most — of these trains also go to Min- 
neapolis. The freight trains passing these 
points are, of course, less regular in their move- 
ments than the scheduled passenger trains, 
but their number is great and their cargoes of 
incalculable value. 



LUMBER. 



A large portion of Minnesota is covered with 
exceptionally fine timber. The northern sec- 
tion, traversed by the Mississippi and its nu- 
merous branches, the St. Croix, the St. Louis 
and other streams, was covered with a growth 
of white and Norway pine of great value, and 
a large area of its central western portion with 
hard timber. At a very early day in the history 
of our State these forests attracted the atten- 
tion of lumbermen from different parts of the 
country, principally from Maine, who erected 
sawmills at the Falls of St. Anthony, Si ill- 
water and other points, and began the cutting 
of logs to supply them. Nearly all the streams 
were navigable for logs, or were easily made 
so, and thus one of the great industries of the 
State had its beginning. Quite an amount of 
lumber was manufactured at Minneapolis in 
the fifties, but no official record of the amounts 
was kept until 1870. An estimate of the 
standing pine in the State was made by the 
United States government for the census of 
1880, which was designed to include all the 
standing pine on the streams leading into the 
.Mississippi, the Rainy Lake river, the St. Croix 
and the head of Lake Superior; in fact, the 
whole State. The estimate was 10,000,000,000 
feet. When this estimate was made it was ac- 
cepted by the best informed lumbermen as ap- 
proximately correct. The mills at Minneapolis 
and above, in the St. Croix valley, and in what 
was called the Duluth district, were cutting 
about 500,000,000 feet a year. It was expected 
Ilia I there would be a gradual increase in the 
consumption of lumber made by Minnesota 
mills, and it was therefore estimated that in 



about fifteen years all the white pine in the 
State would be cut into lumber and sold, but 
such has not proved to be the case, although 
the production has rapidly increased, as was 
expected. But this difference between the es- 
timate and the result is not of much conse- 
quence, as there is nothing more unreliable 
than an estimate of standing timber, and es- 
pecially is such the case when covering a large 
area of country. Since 1880 the production of 
lumber in the State has increased from year to 
year, until it is at the present time fully 1,629,- 
110,000 feet of pine logs every year. The cut 
made by the Minneapolis mills alone in 1898 
was 469,701,000 feet, with a corresponding 
amount of laths and shingles. But this pace 
cannot lie kept up much longer, and apprehen- 
sions of the entire destruction of the forests of 
the State are becoming quite prevalent among 
the people. These fears have resulted in the 
organization of associations for the promotion 
of scientific forestry and the establishment of 
large forest reserves near the headwaters of 
our streams, which are to serve also the pur- 
pose of national parks. In assigning a cause 
for I he lowering of our streams, and the dry- 
ing up of many of our lakes, in a former part 
of this work, I attribute it to the plowing up 
of their valleys and watersheds, and not to the 
destruction of the forests, because I do not 
think that the latter reason has sufficiently 
progressed to produce the result, although it 
is well known that the destruction of growing 
limber about the headwaters of streams oper- 
ates disastrously upon the volume of their wa- 
ters and the regularity of its How. Minnesota 
is the best watered State in the Union, and 
every precaution should be taken to maintain 
this advantage. From the extent of the in- 
terest displayed in the direction of forest re- 
serves, and their scientific administration, we 
have every reason to hope for speedy and final 
success. The State and Interstate Parks al- 
ready established will be noticed hereafter. 



RELIGION. 



The growth of the religious element of a new 
country is always one of its interesting fea- 



42 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



tures, and I will endeavor to give a short 
account of the progress made in this line in 
Minnesota from the mission period, which was 
directed more particularly to the Christianizing 
of the Indians. I will begin with the first 
structure ever erected in the State designed 
for religious purposes. It was a very small 
beginning for the prodigious results that have 
followed it. I speak of the little log "Chapel 
of Saint Paul," built by the Reverend Lucian 
Galtier, in October, 1841, in what is now the 
city of Saint Paul. 

Father Galtier was a French priest of the 
Church of Rome. He was sent by the eccle- 
siastic authorities of Dubuque to the Upper 
Mississippi country, and arrived at Fort Snell- 
ing in April, 1840, and settled at St. Peters 
(now Mendota), where he soon tired of inaction, 
and sought a larger field among the settlers 
who had found homes further down the river, 
in the neighborhood of the present St. Paul. 
He decided that he could facilitate his labors 
by erecting a church at some point accessible 
to his parishioners. Here he found Joseph 
Rondo, Edward Phelan, Vetal Guerin, Pierre 
Bottineau, the Gervais brothers, and a few 
others. The settlers encouraged the idea of 
building a church, and a question of much im- 
portance arose as to where it should be placed. 
I will let the good father tell his own story as 
to the selection of a site. In an account of this 
matter, which he prepared for Bishop Grace 
in 1864, he says: 

"Three different points were offered, one 
called La Pointe Basse, or Point La Claire 
(now Pig's Eye), but I objected because that lo- 
cality was the very extreme end of the new 
settlement, and, in high water, was exposed 
to inundation. The idea of building a church 
which might at any day be swept down the 
river to St. Louis did not please me. Two miles 
and a half further up on his elevated claim 
(now the southern point of Dayton's Bluff) Mr. 
Charles Mouseau offered me an acre of his 
ground, but the place did not suit my purpose. 
I was truly looking ahead, thinking of the fu- 
ture as well as the present. Steamboats could 
not stop there; the bank was too steep, the 
place on the summit of the hill too restricted, 
and communication difficult with the other 
parts of the settlement up and down the river. 



"After mature reflection I resolved to put up 
the church at the nearest possible point to the 
cave (meaning the celebrated Carver's rave un- 
der Dayton's bluff), because it would be more 
convenient for me to cross the river there when 
(•(lining from St. Peters, and because it would 
be also the nearest point to the head of navi- 
gation outside of the reservation line. Mr. B. 
Gervais and Mr. Vetal Guerin, two good, quiet 
fanners, had the only spot which appeared 
likely to answer, the purpose. They consented 
jointly to give me the ground necessary for a 
church site, a garden and a small graveyard. 
I accepted the extreme eastern part of Mr. 
VetaFs claim and the extreme west of Mr. 
Gervais'. Accordingly, in the month of Octo- 
ber, 1841, logs were prepared and a church 
erected, so poor that it well reminded one of 
the stable of Bethlehem. It was destined, how 
ever, to be the nucleus of a great city. On the 
first day of November, in the same year, I 
blessed the new basilica and dedicated it to St. 
Paul, the apostle of nations. I expressed a 
wish at the same time that the settlement 
would be known by the same name, and my de- 
sire was obtained. I had, previously to this 
time, fixed my residence at St. Peters, and as 
the name of Paul is generally connected with 
that of Peter, and the gentiles being well rep- 
resented at the new place in the persons of In- 
dians, I called it St. Paul. The name, 'Saint 
Paul,' applied to a town or city seemed appro- 
priate. The monosyllable is short, sounds well, 
and is understood by all denominations of 
Christians. When Mr. Vetal was married I 
published the bans as those of a resident of St. 
Paul. A Mr. Jackson put up a store, and a 
grocery was opened at the foot of Gervais' 
claim. This soon brought steamboats to land 
there. Thenceforth the place was known as 
'Saint Paul Landing,' and later on as Saint 
Paul." 

The chapel was a small log structure, one 
story high, one door, aud no windows in front, 
with two windows on each side and one in the 
rear end. It had on the front gable end a 
large wooden cross, which projected above the 
peak of the roof some six or eight feet. It oc- 
cupied a conspicuous position on the top of the 
high bluff overlooking the Mississippi, some 
six or eight hundred feet below the point where 
the Wabasha street bridge now spans the river, 
I think between Minnesota and Cedar streets. 
The region thus named was formerly known 
by the appellation of "Pig's Eye." The State 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



43 



owes Father Galtier a debt of gratitude for 
having changed it, as it seems impossible that 
the capital city could ever have attained its 
present majestic proportions, numerous and 
cultivated population, and many other advan- 
tages and attractions under the handicap of 
such a name. 

In the first New Year's address ever printed 
in Minnesota, on January 1, 1850, supposed to 
be by Editor Goodhue, the following lines ap- 
peared: 

"Pig's Eye, converted thou shalt be, like Saul: 
Arise, and be, henceforth, SAINT PAUL." 

Father Galtier died February 21, 1SGG. 

The Chapel of Saint Paul, after having been 
the first to greet all newcomers by way of 
the Mississippi for fifteen years, was taken 
down in 1856. 

The next representative of the Catholic 
Church to come to Minnesota was the Rever- 
end Augnstin Ravoux, who arrived in the fall 
of 1811. He went up the St. Peter's river to 
Traverse des Sioux, where he commenced the 
study of the Sioux language. Soon after he 
went to Little Rock, on the Saint Peter's, and 
thence to Lac qui Parle. After the removal 
of Father Galtier to Keokuk, in Iowa, he had 
under his charge Mendota, St. Paul, Lake 
Pepin and St. Croix until the second day of 
July, 1851, when the Right Reverend Bishop 
Cretin came to St. Paul and assumed charge 
of church matters in Minnesota. Father Ra- 
voux is still living in Saint Paul, at the ad- 
\ anced age of eighty-four years. His venerable 
and priestly form may often be seen upon the 
streets, in excellent health. 

At the time of the coining of Father Galtier 
the country on the east side of the Mississippi 
in what is now Minnesota was under the direct 
jurisdiction of the Bishop of Milwaukee, and 
the part lying west of the river was in the dio- 
cese of Dubuque. 

The growth of the church kept up with the 
rapid settlement of the country. In August, 
L859, the Rt. Rev. Thomas L. Grace succeeded 
Bishop Cretin as Bishop of Saint Paul, and was 
himself succeeded by the Rt. Rev. John Ire- 
land, in July, 1881. So important had Minne- 
sota become to the Catholic Church in America 



that in May of 1888 the See of St. Paul was 
raised to metropolitan dignity and Archbishop 
Ireland was made its first Archbishop, which 
high office he now holds. 

I will not attempt even a short biography of 
Archbishop Ireland, as a somewhat extended 
sketch appears elsewhere iii this volume. His 
fame is world-wide; he is a churchman, states- 
man, diplomat, orator, citizen and patriot, in 
each of which capacities he excels. He has 
carried the fame of Miunesota to all parts of 
the world where the church is known, and has 
demonstrated to the Pope in Rome, to the Cath- 
olics in France, and to the Protestants in Amer- 
ica that there can be perfect consistency and 
harmony between Catholicism and Republican 
government. A history of Minnesota without 
a fitting tribute to Archbishop John Ireland 
would be incomplete indeed. 

The representatives of the Protestant faith 
have not been behind their Catholic brethren 
in providing religious facilities for their adher- 
ent s. They followed immigration closely, and 
sometimes accompanied it. Scarcely would an 
aggregation of people congregate at any one 
point in sufficient numbers to gain the name 
of a village, or a settlement, before a minister 
would be called and a church erected. The 
church went hand in hand with the school- 
house, and in many instances one building 
answered for both purposes. There came Luth- 
erans from Germany and Scandinavia, Episco- 
palians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congrega- 
tionalists, Calvinists, Universalists, Unitarians 
and every sect into which Protestantism is di- 
vided from New England and other eastern 
States. They all found room and encourage- 
ment, and dwelt in harmony. I can safely say 
that few western States have been peopled by 
such law abiding, industrious, moral and reli- 
gious inhabitants as were the first settlers of 
Minnesota. There was nothing to attract the 
ruffianly element, no gold, silver, or other 
mines; the chief industry being peaceful agri- 
culture. So free from all disturbing or dan- 
gerous elements did we consider our Territory 
that I have on several occasions taken a wagon 
loaded with specie amounting to nearly one 
hundred thousand dollars from Saint Paul to 



44 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



the Indian agencies at the Redwood and Yel- 
low Medicine rivers, a distance of two hundred 
miles, through a very sparsely settled country, 
without any guard, except myself and driver, 
with possibly an Indian picked up on the road, 
when I was entitled to a squad of dragoons 
for the asking. 

In the early days the Episcopal Church in 
Minnesota was within the diocese of Wiscon- 
sin, and its functions administered by the ven- 
erable Bishop Kemper, who occasionally made 
us a visit, but in 185!) the church had expanded 
to such an extent that the State was organized 
into a separate diocese, and the Rev. Henry B. 
Whipple, then rector of a church in Chicago, 
was elected Bishop of Minnesota, and still re- 
tains that high office. Bishop Whipple, by his 
energy, learning, goodness and universal pop- 
ularity, has built up his church in this State 
to a standard surpassed by none in the respect 
in which it is held and the influence for good 
which it exerts. The official duties of the Bish- 
op have been so enlarged by the growth of his 
church as to necessitate the appointment of a 
Bishop coadjutor to assist him in their per- 
formance; which latter office is filled by the 
Rev. Mahlon N. Gilbert, who is especially well 
qualified for the position. 

It would be impossible, in a brief history like 
this, to go very deeply or particularly into the 
growth of the religious element of the State. A 
general presentation of the subject in two 
grand divisions, Catholic and Protestant, is 
enough. Suffice it to say that every sect and 
subdivision of the latter has its representative 
in the State, with the one exception of Mormon- 
ism, if that can be classified as a Protestant 
church. There are enough of them to recall 
the answer of the French traveler in America, 
when asked of his opinion of the Americans. 
He said: "They are a most remarkable people; 
they have invented three hundred religions and 
only one sauce." No matter how their creeds 
may be criticised their joint efforts, Catholic 
and Protestant, have filled the State with reli- 
gious, charitable, benevolent and educational 
institutions to an extent rarely witnessed out 
of it, so that if a Minnesotan goes wrong he 
can blame no one but himself. 



RAILROADS. 

In the year 1857, on the third of March, the 
Congress of the United States made an exten- 
sive grant of lands to the Territory to aid in 
the construction of railroads. It consisted of 
every alternate section of land designated by 
odd numbers for six sections in width on each 
side of the roads specified, and their branches. 
The grant mapped out a complete system of 
roads for the Territory, and provided that the 
land granted for each road should be applied 
exclusively to such road and no other purpose 
whatever. The lines designated in the grant- 
ing act were as follows: 

From Stillwater, by the way of St. Paul and 
Si. Anthony, to a point between the foot of Big 
SI one lake and the mouth of the Sioux Wood 
river, with a branch, via St. Cloud and Crow 
Wing, to the navigable waters of the Red River 
of the North, at such point as the Legislature 
of the Territory may determine. 

From Saint Paul and from Saint Anthony 
via Minneapolis to a convenient point of junc- 
tion west of the Mississippi to the southern 
boundary of the Territory in the direction of 
the mouth of the Big Sioux river, with a 
branch via Faribault to the north line of the 
State of Iowa, west of range sixteen. 

From Winona via St. Peter to a point on the 
Big Sioux river south of the Forty-fifth parallel 
of North Latitude. 

Also from La Crescent via Target Lake, up 
the valley of the Root river, to a point east 
of range seventeen. 

The Territory or future State was author- 
ized to sell one hundred and twenty sections of 
this land whenever twenty continuous miles of 
any of the roads or branches was completed; 
the land so sold to be contiguous to the com- 
pleted road. The right of way or roadbed of 
any of the subsidized roads was also granted 
through any of the government lands. The 
roads were all to be completed within ten 
years, and if any of them were not finished by 
that time the lands applicable to the unfinished 
portions were to revert to the government. The 
lands granted by this act amounted to about 
1.500,01)0 acres. An act was subsequently 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



45 



passed on March second, 1865, increasing the 
grant to ten sections to the mile. Various other 
grants were made at different times, but they 
do not bear upon the subject I am about to 
present. 

This grant came at a time of great financial 
depression, and when the Territory was about 
to change its dependent condition for that of a 
sovereign State in the Union. It was greeted 
as a means of relief that might lift the Terri- 
tory out of its financial troubles, and insure 
its immediate prosperity. The people did not 
take into consideration the fact that the lands 
embraced in the grant, although as good as any 
in the world, were remote from the habitation 
of man, lying in a country absolutely bankrupt, 
and possessed no present value whatever. Nor 
did they consider that the whole country was 
laboring under such financial depression that 
all public enterprises were paralyzed, but such 
was, unfortunately, the monetary and business 
condition. 

February 23, 1857, an act had passed the 
Congress of the United States authorizing the 
people of Minnesota to form a Constitution 
preparatory to becoming a State in- the Union. 
Gen. Willis A. Gorman, who was then Gov- 
ernor of the Territory, called a special session 
of the Legislature to take into consideration 
measures to carry out the land grant and en- 
abling acts. The extra session convened on 
April 27. In the meantime Governor Gor- 
man's term of office had expired, and Samuel 
Medary, of Ohio, had been appointed as his 
successor, and had assumed the duties of his 
office. He opened the extra session with an ap- 
propriate message. The extra session ad- 
journed on the 23rd of May, and in accordance 
with the provisions of the enabling' act of Con- 
gress an election was held on the first Monday 
in June for delegates to a Constitutional Con- 
vention, which was to assemble at the capitol 
on the second Monday in July. The ('(institu- 
tional Convention is an event in the history of 
Minnesota sufficiently important and unique to 
entitle it to special treatment, which will be 
given hereafter. 

An act was passed at the extra session May 
19, 1857, by which the grant of lands made to 



the Territory was formally accepted "upon the 
terms, conditions and restrictions" contained 
in the granting act. 

On the 22nd of May, at the extra session, 
an act was passed to execute the trust created 
by the Land Grant Act, by which a number of 
railroad companies were incorporated to con- 
struct roads on the lines indicated by the act of 
Congress, and to aid in the building of these 
roads, and the lands applicable to each was 
granted to it. The companies were to receive 
title to the lands as the construction pro- 
gressed, as provided in the granting act. They 
also had conferred upon them powers to issue 
bonds in the discretion of the directors, and to 
mortgage their roads and franchises to secure 
them. 

These railroad companies were organized 
upon the hope that the aid extended to them 
by the grants of land would enable them to 
raise money sufficient to build their roads. 
They had nothing of their own, and no security 
but the roads and lands upon which to nego- 
tiate loans. The times, and the novel idea of 
building railroads in unpeopled countries were 
all against them, and, of course, nothing could 
be done. 

The Constitutional Convention met and 
framed an instrument for the fundamental law 
of the new State which was very conservative, 
and, among other things, contained the follow- 
ing clause, which was enacted in Section Five 
of Article Nine: "For the purpose of defray- 
ing extraordinary expenses the State may con- 
tract debts, but such debts shall never, in the 
aggregate, exceed two hundred and fifty thou- 
sand dollars.'' And another clause found in 
Section Ten, which is as follows: "The credit 
of the State shall never be given or loaned in 
aid of any individual, association or corpora- 
tion." 

It was the intention of the framers of the 
Constitution to prevent the Legislature from 
ever using the credit or funds of the State in 
aid of any private enterprise, and these pro- 
visions effectually accomplished that end. 

The people were deeply disappointed when 
they became convinced that the roads could 
not be built with the aid that Congress had ex- 



4 6 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



tended, and as this work was also looked upon 
as the only hope of financial relief the ease be- 
came a desperate one, which could only he rem- 
edied by the most extreme measures. The pro- 
moters of the railroads soon discovered one, in 
an amendment of the section of theConstitution 
which prohibited the credit of the State being 
given or loaned to anyone, and at the first ses- 
sion of the first Legislature, which convened 
on December third, 1857, an act was passed 
proposing such amendment to be submitted to 
the people for ratification. The importance of 
this amendment and its effect and conse- 
quences upon the future of the State demands 
that I give it nearly in full. It changed section 
ten as it was originally passed, and made it 
read as follows: 

"SECTION 10. The credit of the State shall 
never be given or loaned in aid of any indi- 
vidual, association or corporation, except that 
for the purpose of expediting the construction 
of the lines of railroads, in aid of which the 
Congress of the United States has granted 
lands to the Territory of Minnesota, the Gov- 
ernor shall cause to lie issued and delivered to 
each of the companies in which said grants are 
vested by the Legislative Assembly of Minne- 
sota the special bonds of the State, bearing 
an interest of seven per cent per annum, pay- 
able semi-annually in the city of New York 
as a loan of public credit, to an amount not 
exceeding twelve hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars, or an aggregate amount to all of said 
companies not exceeding five millions of dol- 
lars, in manner following, to-wit." 

The amendment then prescribed that when- 
ever ten miles of railroad was graded so as to 
be ready for the superstructure it should re- 
ceive |100,000 of the bonds, and when fen miles 
should be completed, with thecals running, the 
company so completing should receive another 
$100,000 of the bonds, until each company had 
received its quota. The bonds were to be de- 
nominated "State Railroad Bonds," for the 
payment of which the faith and credit of the 
State was to be pledged. The railroad com- 
panies were to pay the principal and interest 
of the bonds, and to secure such payment they 
were to pledge the net profits of their respect- 
ive roads, and to convey to the State the first 



two hundred and forty sections of land they 
leech id; and to deliver to the State treasurer 
an amount of their first mortgage bonds equal 
to the amount of bonds received by them from 
the State, and mortgage to the State their 
roads and franchises. This was all the security 
the companies could give, hut the underlying 
difficulty was, that it had no value whatever. 
There were no roads, no net, or other profits. 
The lands had no value whatever except such 
as lay in the future, which was dependent on 
the construction of the roads and the settle- 
ment of the country. The bonds of the com- 
panies, of course, possessed only such value as 
the property they represented, which was noth- 
ing, and the mortgages were of the same char- 
acter. The whole scheme was based upon 
hopes, to which the slightest application of 
sober reasoning would have pronounced im- 
possible of fulfillment. But the country was 
hungry and willing to seize upon anything that 
offered a semblance or shadow of relief. 

The proposed amendment was to be sub 
mitted to the people for adoption or rejection 
at an election to be held April 15, 1S58. In or- 
der to fully comprehend the condition of the 
public mind, it should be known that the Con- 
stitution, with all the safeguards that I have 
mentioned, had only been in force since Octo- 
ber 13th, 1857, a period of about six months. 
and had been carried by a vote of 30,055 for, to 
571 against its adoption. 

The campaign preceding the election was a 
very active one. The railroad people flooded 
the State with speakers, documents, pictures, 
glee clubs singing songs of the delights of "Rid- 
ing on the rail," and every conceivable artifice 
was resorted to to carry the amendment. It 
was carried by a vote of 25, 02:: in favor of its 
passage to 0.7.'!:! against. 

To give an idea of the intense feeling thai 
was exhibited in this election it is only neces- 
sary to state that at the city of Winona there 
were 1,102 votes cast in favor of the amend- 
ment and only one vote against it. This nega- 
tive vote, to his eternal honor be it said, was 
cast by Thomas Wilson, afterwards Chief Jus- 
tice of the State, and now a resident of St. 
Paul. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



47 



In the execution of the requirements of the 
iimendment the railroad companies claimed 
that they could issue first mortgage bonds on 
their properties to an indefinite amount and 
exchange them with the State for its bonds, 
bond for bond, but the Governor, who was Hon. 
Henry H. Sibley, construed the amendment to 
mean that the first mortgage bonds of the com- 
panies which the State was to receive must be 
an exclusive first lien on the lands and fran- 
chises of the company. He therefore declined 
to issue the bonds of the State unless his views 
were adopted. The Minnesota and Pacific 
Railroad company, one of the land grant cor- 
porations, applied to the Supreme Court of the 
State for a writ of mandamus to compel the 
Governor to issue the bonds. The case was 
heard and two members of the court, holding 
the views of the applicants, the w 7 rit was is- 
sued. I was a member of the court at that 
time, but entertaining opposite views from the 
majority, I filed a dissenting opinion. Any 
one sufficiently interested in the question can 
find the case reported in Volume Two, of the 
Minnesota Reports, at page thirteen. This 
decision was only to be advisory, as the courts 
have no power to coerce the Executive. 

The railroad companies entered into con- 
tracts for grading their roads, and a sufficient 
amount of grading was done to entitle them to 
about $2,300,000 of the bonds, which were is- 
sued accordingly, and went into the hands of 
the contractors to pay for the work done. It, 
however, soon became apparent that no com- 
pleted railroad would ever result from this 
scheme, even if the whole five million of bonds 
were issued. What should have been known 
before was made clear when any of these Stale 
bonds were put on the market. The credit of 
the State was worthless, and the bonds were 
valueless. The people became as anxious to 
shake off the incubus of debt they had imposed 
upon their infant State as they had been to 
rush into it. 

Governor Sibley, in his message delivered to 
the second Legislature in December, 1S59, said, 
in speaking of this issue of bonds: "I regret 
to be obliged to state that the measure has 
proved a failure, and has by no means accom- 



plished what was hoped for it, either in provid- 
ing means for the issue of a safe currency or 
of aiding the companies in the completion of 
tlic roads." 

At the election held on November 6, 18G0, 
the Constitution was again amended, by ex- 
punging from it the amendment of 1858, au- 
thorizing the issue of the State Railroad Bonds 
and prohibiting any further issue of them. An 
amendment was also made to Section II. of 
Article IX. of the Constitution, at the same 
time, by providing that no law levying a tax, 
or making any other provisions for the pay- 
ment of interest or principal of the bonds al- 
ready issued, should take effect or be in force 
until it had been submitted to the people and 
adopted by a majority of the electors. 

It was very proper to prohibit the issuance 
of any more of the bonds, but the provision 
requiring a vote of the people before those 
already out could be paid was practically repu- 
diation, and the State labored under that dam- 
aging stigma for over twenty years. Attempts 
were made to obtain the sanction of the people 
for the payment of these bonds, but they were 
defeated, until it became unpleasant to admit 
that one was a resident of Minnesota. When- 
ever the name of Minnesota was heard on the 
floor of Congress as an applicant for favors, 
or even for justice, it was met by the charge 
of repudiation. This was an era in our history 
very much to be regretted, but the State grew 
steadily in material wealth. 

On March 2, 1881, the Legislature passed 
an act the general purpose of which was to 
adjust, with the consent of the holders, the 
outstanding bonds, at the rate of fifty cents on 
the dollar, and contained the curious provision 
that the Supreme Court should decide whether 
it must first be submitted to the people in order 
to be valid or not, and if the Supreme Court 
should not so decide, then an equal number of 
the Judges of the District Court should act. 
The Supreme Court Judges declined to act, and 
the Governor called upon the District Court 
Judges to assume the duty. Before any action 
was taken by the latter the Attorney General 
applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of pro- 
hibition to prevent them from taking any ac- 



4 8 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



tion. The case was most elaborately discussed, 
and the opinion of the Supreme Court was de- 
livered by Chief Justice Gilullan, which is 
most exhaustive and convincing. The Court 
holds that the ad of 1881 is void by conferring 
upon the judiciary legislative power, and that 
the amendment to the Constitution providing 
that no bonds should be paid unless the law 
authorizing such payment was first submitted 
to and adopted by the people was void, as be- 
ing repugnant to the clause in the Constitution 
of the United States that no State shall pass 
any law impairing the obligation of contracts. 
With these impediments to a just settlement 
of this question removed, the State was at lib- 
erty to make such arrangements with its bond 
creditors as was satisfactory. John S. Pills- 
bury was Governor of the State at that time. 
He was a man of superior intelligence and un- 
bending integrity, and had always been in fa- 
vor of paying the bonds and removing the 
stain from the honor of the State; finding his 
hands free, it did not take him long to arrange 
the whole matter satisfactorily, and to the ap- 
proval of all the parties interested. The debt 
was paid by the issue of new bonds at the rate 
of fifty per cent of the principal and interest 
of the outstanding ones, and the surrender of 
the latter. This adjustment ended a transac- 
tion that was conceived and executed in folly, 
and was only prevented from eventuating in 
crime by the persistent efforts of our most hon- 
orable and thoughtful citizens throughout the 
State. The transaction has often been called 
by those who advocated repudiation, "An old 
Territorial fraud," but there was nothing in it 
but a bad bargain, made under the extraordi- 
nary pressure of financial difficulties. 



THE FIRST RAILROAD ACTUALLY 
BUILT. 

To the State was restored all the lands and 
franchises of the various companies by means 
of foreclosure, and on March 8,18(il,was passed 
an act to facilitate the construction of the Min- 
nesota and Pacific railroad, by which act the 



old railroad was rehabilitated, and required to 
construct and put in operation its road from 
St. Paul to St. Anthony on or before the first 
day of January, 1802. The company was re- 
quired to deposit with the Governor $10,000 as 
an earnest of good faith. Work was soon com- 
menced, and the first ten miles constructed as 
required. This was the first railroad ever built 
and operated in Minnesota. The first locomo 
tive engine was brought up the river on a 
barge and landed at the St. Paul end of the 
track in the latter part of October, 1861. This 
pioneer locomotive was called the "William 
Crooks" after a distinguished civil engineer of 
that name, who was very active and instru- 
mental in the building of the road. The first ten 
miles of road cost more energy and brain work 
than all the rest of the vast system that has 
succeeded it. It was the initial step in what is 
now known as the Great Northern Railway, a 
road that spans the continent from St. Paul to 
the Pacific, and reflects upon its enterprising 
builders all the credit due to the pioneer. 

It was not long before the Northern Pacific 
Railroad company was incorporated by act of 
Congress, passed on July 2, 18G4. This road 
was to extend from the head of Lake Superior 
to Puget sound on a line north of the forty- 
fifth degree of North Latitude, with a branch 
via the valley of the Columbia river to Port- 
land, Oregon. The company had a grant of 
twenty alternate sections in the States through 
which it passed. It was commenced shortly 
after iis incorporation, but met with financial 
disaster, and was sold under foreclosure of a 
mortgage, and underwent many trials and trib- 
ulations, until it was finally completed Sep 
tember 8, 1883, and has been in successful 
operation ever since. As the Northern Pacific 
has its eastern terminus and general offices in 
St. Paul, it is essentially a Minnesota road. 
The same may be said of the Great Northern, 
although both are transcontinental roads. 

From the small beginning of railroad con- 
struction in 1802 has grown thirty-seven dis- 
tinct railroad corporations, operating in the 
State of Minnesota six thousand and sixty-two 
and sixty-nine one-hundredths miles of main 
tracks, according to the official reports of 1898, 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



49 



with quite a substantial addition in course of 
construction. These various lines cover and 
render accessible nearly every city, town and 
village in the State. 

The method of taxation adopted by the State 
of railroad property is a very wise and just one. 
It imposes a tax of three per cent upon the 
gross earnings of the roads, which, in 1890, 
yielded the comfortable sum of $1,037,194.40, 
the gross earnings of all amounting to |36,- 
918,741.71. This plan of taxation gives the 
State a direct interest in the prosperity of the 
roads, as its taxes are increased when business 
is good, and the roads are relieved from op- 
pressive taxation in time of business depres- 
sion. 

The grading which was done, and for which 
the bonds of the State were issued, was, as a 
general thing, utilized in the final construction 
of the roads. 



THE SPIRIT LAKE MASSACRE. 

In 1842 the country north of Iowa and west 
of the Mississippi as far north as the Little 
Rapids, on the Minnesota river, was occupied 
by the M'-de-wa-kon-ton and Wak-pe-ku-ta 
bands of Sioux. The Wak-pe-ku-ta band was 
at war with the Sacs and Foxes, and was un- 
der the leadership of two principal chiefs 
named Wam-di-sapa, the Black Eagle, and Ta- 
sa-gi. Wam-di-sapa and his band were a law- 
less, predatory set, whose depredations pro- 
longed the war with the Sacs and Foxes, and 
finally separated him and his band from the 
Wak-pe-ku-tas. They moved west towards the 
Missouri and occupied the valley of the Ver- 
million river, and so thorough was the separa- 
tion that the band was not regarded as part 
of the Wak-pe-ku-ta when the latter, together 
with the M'-de-wa-kon-tons made their treaty 
with the government at Mendota in 1851. 

By 1857 all that remained of Wan-di-sapa's 
straggling band was about ten or fifteen lodges 
under the chieftainship of Ink-pa-du-ta, or 
"Scarlet Point," or "Red End." They had 
planted near Spirit Lake, which lies partly in 
Dickinson county, Iowa, and partly in Jackson 



county, Minnesota, prior to 1857, and ranged 
the country from there to the Missouri, and 
were considered a bad lot of vagabonds. 

Between 1855 and 1857 a small settlement 
had sprung up about forty miles south of Spir- 
it Lake, on the In-yan-yan-ke or Rock river. 

In the spring of 185C Hon. William Free- 
born, of Red Wing (after whom the county of 
Freeborn, in this Slate, is called), had pro- 
jected a settlement at Spirit Lake which, by 
the next spring, contained six or seven houses, 
with as many families. 

About the same time another settlement was 
started some ten or fifteen miles north of Spirit 
Lake, on the headwaters of the Des Moines, 
and a town laid out which was called Spring- 
field. In the spring of 1857 there were two 
stores and several families at this place. 

These settlements were on the extreme fron- 
tier and very much isolated. There was noth- 
ing to the west of them until you reached the 
Rocky mountains, and the nearest settlements 
on the north and northeast were on the Minne- 
sota and Watonwan rivers, while to the south 
lay the small settlement on the Rock river, 
about forty miles distant. All these settle- 
ments, although on ceded lands, were actually 
in the heart of the Indian country, and abso- 
lutely unprotected and defenseless. 

In 1857 I was United States Indian agent 
for the Sioux of the Mississippi, but had lived 
on the frontier long enough before to have ac- 
quired a general knowledge of Ink-pa-du-ta's 
reputation and his whereabouts. I was sta- 
tioned on the Redwood and Yellow Medicine 
rivers, near where they empty into the Minne- 
sota, and about eighty miles from Spirit Lake. 

Early in March, 1857, Ink-pa-du-ta's band 
were hunting in the neighborhood of the set- 
tlement on the Rock river, and one of them was 
bitten by a dog belonging to a white man. The 
Indian killed the dog. The owner of the dog 
assaulted the Indian and beat him severely. 
The white men then went in a body to the camp 
of the Indians and disarmed them. The arms 
were either returned to them or they obtained 
others, I have never ascertained which. They 
were probably given back to them on condition 
that they should leave, as they at once came 



50 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



north to Spirit Lake, where they must have 
arrived about the Gth or 7th of March. 
They proceeded at once to massacre the set- 
tlers, and killed all the men they found there, 
together with some women, and carried into 
captivity four women, three of whom were 
married and one single. Their names were 
Mrs. Noble, Mrs. Marble, Mrs. Thatcher and 
Miss < Jardner. They came north to the Spring- 
field settlement, where they killed all the peo- 
ple they found. The total number killed at 
both places was forty-two. 

I was the first person to receive notice of 
this affair. On the 9th of March a Mr. Morris 
Markham, who had been absent from the Spirit 
Lake settlement for some time, returned, and 
found all the people dead or missing. Seeing 
signs of Indians, he took it for granted that 
they had perpetrated the outrage. He at once 
went to Springfield and reported what he had 
seen. Some of the people fled, but others re- 
mained and lost their lives in consequence. It 
lias always been my opinion that, being in the 
habit of trading with these Indians occasion- 
ally, they did not believe they stood in any dan- 
ger; and what is equally probable, they may 
not have believed the report. Every one who 
has lived in an Indian country knows how fre- 
quently startling rumors are in circulation, 
and how often they prove unfounded. 

The people of Springfield sent the news to 
me by two young men, who came on foot 
through the deep snow. The story was corrob- 
orated in a way that convinced me that it was 
true. They arrived on the 18th of March, com- 
pletely worn out and snow-blind. I at once 
made a requisition on Colonel Alexander, com- 
manding at Fort Ridgely, for troops. There 
wire at the fort five or six companies of the 
Tenth United States Infantry, and the Colonel 
promptly ordered Capt. Barnard E. Bee, of 
Company A, to proceed with his company to 
the scene of the trouble. The country between 
the fort and Spirit Lake was uninhabited, and 
the distance from eighty to one hundred miles. 
I furnished two experienced guides from 
among my Sioux half-breeds. They took a 
pony and a light traineau, put on their snow- 
shoes, and were ready to go anywhere. Not 



so with the soldiers, how r ever. They were 
equipped in about the same manner as they 
would have been in campaigning in Florida, 
their only transportation being heavy wheeled 
army wagons, drawn by six mules. It soon be- 
came apparent that the outfit could not move 
straight to the objective point, and it became 
necessary to follow a trail down the Minnesota 
In Mankato and up the Watonwan in the di- 
rection of the lake, which was reached after 
one of the most arduous marches ever made 
by troops, on which for many miles the sol- 
diers had to march ahead of the mules to break 
a road for them. The Indians, as we expected, 
were gone. A short pursuit was made, but the 
guides pronounced the campfires of the Indians 
several days old, and it was abandoned. The 
dead were buried, and after a short stay the 
soldiers returned to the fort. 

When this affair became known throughout 
the Territory it caused great consternation and 
apprehension, most of the settlers supposing it 
was the work of the Sioux nation. Many of the 
most exposed abandoned their homes tem- 
porarily. Their fears, however, were allayed 
by an explanation which I published in the 
newspapers. 

I at once began to devise plans for the rescue 
of the white women. I knew that any hostile 
demonstration would result in their murder. 
While thinking the matter out an event oc- 
curred that opened the way to a solution. A 
party of my Indians had been hunting on the 
Big Simix river, and having learned that Ink- 
pa du-ta was encamped at Lake Chan-pta-ya- 
tan-ka, and that he had some white women 
prisoners, two young brothers visited the camp 
and succeeded in purchasing Mrs. Marble, and 
brought her into the Yellow Medicine Agency 
and delivered her to the missionaries, who 
turned her over to me. I received her on the 
21st of March, and learned that two of the oth- 
er captives were still alive. Of course, my first 
object was to rescue the survivors, and to en- 
courage the Indians to make the attempt I 
paid the brothers who had brought in Mrs. 
Marble five hundred dollars each. I could raise 
only five hundred dollars at the agency, and 
to make up the deficiency I resorted to a meth- 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



51 



od, then novel, but which has since become 
quite general. I issued a bond, which, al- 
though done without authority, met with a 
better fate than many that have followed it — 
it was paid at maturity. 

As it was the first bond ever issued in what 
is now Minnesota, the two Dakotas, Montana, 
and, I may add, the whole Northwest, it may 
lie interesting to give it in full: 

"I, Stephen R. Riggs, missionary among 
the Sioux Indians, and I, Charles E. Flan- 
drau. United States Indian Agent for the 
Sioux, being satisfied that Mak-piya-ka-ho-ton 
and Si-ha-ho-ta, two Sioux Indians, have per- 
formed a valuable service to the Territory of 
Minnesota and humanity by rescuing from cap- 
tivity Mrs. Margaret Ann Marble, and deliver- 
ing her to the Sioux Agent, and being further 
satisfied that the rescue of the two remaining 
white women who are now in captivity among 
Ink-pa-du-ta's band of Indians depends very 
much on the liberality shown towards the said 
Indians who have rescued Mrs. Marble, and 
having full confidence in the humanity and lib- 
erality of the Territory of Minnesota, through 
its government and citizens, have this day paid 
to said two above named Indians the sum of 
five hundred dollars in money, and do hereby 
pledge to said two Indians that the further 
sum of five hundred dollars will be paid to 
them by the Territory of Minnesota, or its cit- 
izens, within three months from the date 
hereof. 

"Dated May 22, 1857. at Pa-ju-ta-zi-zi, M. T. 
"Stephen R. Riggs, 
"Missionary, A. B. C. F. M. 
"Chas.' E. Flandrau, 
"U. S. Indian Agent for Sioux." 

I immediately called for volunteers to res- 
cue the remaining two women, and soon had 
my choice. I selected Paul Ma-za-ku-ta-ma-ni, 
the president of the Hazelwood Republic, An- 
pe-tu-tok-cha, or John Otherday, and Che-tan- 
ma-za, or the Iron Hawk. I gave them a large 
outfit of horses, wagons, calicos, trinkets of all 
kinds, and a general assortment of things that 
tempt the savage. They started on the 23rd 
of May from the Yellow Medicine agency on 
their important and dangerous mission. I did 
not expect them to return before the middle of 
June, and immediately commenced prepara- 
tions to punish the marauders. I went to the 



foil, and, together with Colonel Alexander, we 
laid a plan to attack Ink-pa-du-ta's camp with 
l lie entire garrison and utterly annihilate 
them, which we would undoubtedly have ac- 
complished had not an unexpected event frus- 
trated our plans. Of course, we could not 
move on the Indians until my expedition had 
returned with the captives, as that would have 
been certain death to them. And just about 
the time we were anxiously expecting them a 
couple of steamboats arrived at the fort with 
peremptory orders for the whole garrison to 
embark for Utah to join Gen. Albert Sydnej 
Johnston's expedition against the Mormons, 
and that was the last I saw of the Tenth for 
ten years. 

My expedition found that Mrs. Thatcher and 
Mrs. Noble had been killed, but succeeded in 
bringing in Jliss Gardner, who was forwarded 
to me at St. Paul, and by me formally delivered 
to Governor Medary June 23, 1857. She 
was afterwards married, and is now a widow, 
Mrs. Abbie Gardner Sharpe, and resides in the 
house from which she was abducted by the sav- 
ages forty-two years ago. I paid the Indians 
who rescued her four hundred dollars each for 
their services. The Territory made an appro- 
priation on the 15th of May, 1857, of |10,000 
to rescue the captives, but as there were no 
telegraphs or other speedy means of communi- 
cation the work was all done before the news 
of the appropriation reached the border. My 
outlay, however, was all refunded from this 
appropriation. I afterwards succeeded, with a 
squad of soldiers and citizens, in killing one 
of Ink-pa-du-ta's sons, who had taken an active 
part in the massacre, and that ended the first 
serious Indian trouble that Minnesota was af- 
flicted with. 

• 

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 

By the end of the year 185G the Territory of 
Minnesota had attained such growth and 
wealth that the question of becoming a State 
within the Union began to attract attention. It 
was urged by the government at Washington 
that we were amply capable of taking care of 
ourselves, and sufficiently wealthy to pay our 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



expenses, and statehood was pressed upon us 
from that quarter. There was another potent 
influence at work at home. We had several 
prominent gentlemen who were convinced thai 
their services were needed in the Senate of the 
United States, and that their presence there 
would strengthen and adorn that body, and 
as no positive opposition was developed the 
Congress of the United States, on the 26th 
of February, 1857, passed an act authorizing 
the Territory to form a State government. It 
prescribed the same boundaries for the State 
that we now have, although there had been a 
large number of people who had advocated an 
east and west division of the Territory, on a 
line a little north of the forty-fifth parallel 
of north latitude. It provided for a conven- 
tion to frame the Constitution of the new 
State, winch was to be composed of two dele- 
gates for each member of the Territorial Leg- 
islature, to be elected in the representative 
districts on the first Monday in June, 1857. The 
convention was to be held at the capital of the 
Territory on the second Monday of July fol- 
lowing. It submitted to the Convention five 
propositions to be answered, which, if ac- 
cepted, were to become obligatory on the 
United States and the State of Minnesota. 
They were in substance as follows: 

First — Whether sections sixteen and thirty- 
six in each township should be granted to the 
Slate for the use of schools. 

Second — Whether seventy two sections of 
land should be set aside for the use and sup- 
port of a State university. 

Third — Whether ten sections should be 
granted to the State in aid of public buildings. 

Fourth — Whether all salt springs in the 
Slate, not exceeding twelve, witli six sections 
of land to each, should be granted to the State. 

Fifth — Whether five per centum of the net 
proceeds of the sales of all the public lands 
lying within the State which should be sold 
after its admission should lie paid to the State 
for the purpose of roads and internal improve- 
ments. 

All the five propositions, if accepted, were to 
be on the condition, to be expressed in the Con- 
stitution or an irrevocable ordinance, that the 
State should never interfere with the primary 



disposal of the soil within the State by the 
United States, or with any regulations Con- 
gress should make for securing title to said 
lands in bona fide purchasers thereof, and that 
no tax should be imposed on lands belonging 
to the United States, and that non-resident 
proprietors should never be taxed higher than 
residents. 

These propositions were all accepted, rati- 
fied and confirmed by Section III. of Article 
II. of the Constitution. 

The election for delegates took place as pro- 
vided for, and on the day set for the conven 
tion to meet nearly all of them had assembled 
at the capital. Great anxiety was manifested 
by both the Democrats and the Republicans to 
capture the organization of the convention. 
Neither party had a majority of all the mem- 
bers present, but there were a number of con- 
tested seats on both sides, of which both con- 
testant and contestee were present, and these 
duplicates being counted, were sufficient to 
give each party an apparent majority. It was 
obvious that a determined fight for the organ- 
ization was imminent. The convention was to 
meet in the House of Representatives, and to 
gain an advantage the Republicans took pos- 
session of the hall the night before the opening- 
day, so as to be the first on hand in the morn- 
ing. The Democrats, on learning of this move, 
held a caucus to decide upon a plan of action. 
Precedents and authorities were looked up, 
and two fundamental points decided upon. It 
was discovered that the Secretary of the Ter- 
ritory was the proper party to call the con- 
vention to order, and as Mr. Charles L. Chase 
was the Secretary, and also a Democratic dele- 
gate, he was chosen to make the call. It was 
further found that when no hour was desig- 
nated for the meeting of a parliamentary body 
that noon of the day appointed was the time. 
I'.eiiig armed with these points, the Democrats 
decided to wait until noon and then march 
into the hall in a body with Delegate Chase at 
their head, and as soon as he reached the chair 
he was to spring into it and call the conven- 
tion to order. General Gorman was immediate- 
ly to move an adjournment until the next day 
at twelve o'clock M., which motion was to be 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



53 



put by the chair, the Democrats feeling sure 
that the Republicans, being taken by surprise, 
would rote no, while the Democrats would all 
vote aye, and thus commit more than a major- 
ity of the whole to the organization under Mr. 
Chase On reaching the chair Mr. Chase im- 
mediately sprang into it and called the con- 
vention to order. General Gorman moved the 
adjournment, which was put by the chair. All 
the Democrats loudly voted in the affirmative 
and the Republicans in the negative. The mo- 
tion was declared carried, and the Democrats 
solemnly marched out of the hall. 

The above is the Democratic version of the 
event. The Republicans, however, claim that 
•John W. North reached the chair first and 
called the convention to order, and that as the 
Republicans had a majority of the members 
present, the organization made under his call 
was the only regular one. Nothing can be de- 
termined as to which is the true story from 
the records kept of the two bodies, because 
they are each made up to show strict regular- 
ity, and as it is utterly immaterial in any sub- 
stantial point of view I will not venture any 
opinion, although I was one of the actors in 
the drama, or farce, as the reader may see fit 
to regard it. 

The Republicans remained in the hall and 
formed a Constitution to suit themselves, sit- 
ting until August 29, just forty-seven days. 
The Democrats, on the next day after their ad- 
journment, at twelve o'clock M., went in a body 
to the door of the House of Representatives, 
where they were met by Secretary and Dele- 
gate Chase, who said to them: "Gentlemen, 
the hall to which the delegates adjourned yes 
terday is now occupied by a meeting of citizens 
of the Territory, who refuse to give possession 
to the Constitutional Convention." 

General Gorman then said: "I move the con- 
vention adjourn to the council chamber." The 
motion was carried, and the delegates accord- 
ingly repaired to the council chamber in the 
west wing of the capitol, where Mr. Chase 
called the convention to order. Each branch 
of the convention elected its officers. The Re- 
publicans chose St. A. D. Balcombe for their 
president and the Democrats selected Hon. 



Henry H. Sibley. Doth bodies worked dili- 
gently on a Constitution, and each succeeded 
in making one so much like the other that, 
after sober reflection, it was decided thai I lie 
State could be admitted under either, and if 
both were sent to Congress that body would 
reject them for irregularity. So, towards the 
end of the long session a compromise was ar- 
rived at by the formation of a joint committee 
from each convention, who were to evolve a 
Constitution out of the two for submission to 
the people; the result of which, after many 
sessions and some fisticuffs, was the instrument 
under which the Stale was finally admitted. 

A very curious complication resulted from 
two provisions in the Constitution. In seel ion 
five of the schedule it was provided that "All 
Territorial officers, civil and military, now 
holding their offices under the authority of the 
United States or of the Territory of Minnesota, 
shall continue to hold and exercise their re- 
spective offices until they shall be superseded 
by the authority of the State," and section six 
provided that "The first session of the Legisla- 
ture of the State of Minnesota shall commence 
on the first Wednesday of December next, etc" 

These provisions were made under the sup- 
position that the Slate would be admitted as 
soon as the Constitution would be laid before 
Congress, which it was presumed would be 
long before the date fixed for the holding of 
the first Stale Legislature, but such did not 
turn out to be the case. The election was held 
as provided for on the 13th day of October, 
1857, for the adoption or rejection of the Con- 
stitution, and for the election of all the Stale 
officers, members of Congress and of the Legis- 
lature. The Constitution was adopted by a 
vote of 36,240 for and TOO against, and the 
whole Democratic State ticket was also chosen. 
And to be sure not to lose full representation 
in Congress, three members of the House of 
Representatives were also chosen, who were all 
Democrats. 

The Constitution was duly presented to Con- 
gress, and admission for the State demanded. 
Much to the disappointment of our people, all 
kinds and characters of objections were raised 
to our admission; one of which I remember 



54 



1IISTOKY OF MINNESOTA. 



was, thai as the term of office of the State Sen- 
ators was fixed at two years, and as there was 
nothing said about the term of the members 
of the House, they wen- elected for life, and 
consequently the government created was not 
Republican. Alexander Stevens, of Georgia, 
seriously combatted this position in a learned 
constitutional argument, in which he proved 
that a Slate had absolute control of the sub- 
ject, and could fix the term of all its officers 
for life if it so preferred, and that Congress 
had no right to interfere. Many other equally 
frivolous points were made against our admis- 
sion, which were debated until the 11th day of 
.May, 1858, when the Federal doors were 
opened and Minnesota became a State. The 
ad admitting the State cut down the Congres- 
sional representation to two. The three gen- 
tlemen who had been elected to these positions 
were compelled to determine who would re- 
main and who should surrender. History has 
not recorded how the decision was made, 
whether by cutting cards, tossing a coin, or in 
some other way, but the result was that 
George L. Becker was counted out and W. W. 
Phelps and James M. Cavanaugh took the 
prizes. 

It was always thought at home that the long 
delay in our admission was not from any dis- 
inclination to let us in, but because the House 
was quite evenly divided politically between 
the Democrats and the Republicans, and there 
being a contested seat from Ohio, between Mr. 
Valandingham and Mr. Lew Campbell, it was 
feared by the Republicans that if Minnesota 
came in with three Democratic members it 
might turn the scale in favor of Valanding- 
ham. 

This delay created a very perplexing condi- 
tion of things. The State Legislature elected 
under the Constitution met on the first 
Wednesday of December before the Constitu- 
tion was recognized by Congress, and while the 
Territorial government was in full force. It 
passed a book full of laws, all of which were 
State laws approved by a Territorial Governor. 
Perhaps in some countries it would have been 
difficult to harmonize such irregularities, but 
our courts were quite up to the emergency 



and straightened them all out the Hist time the 
question was raised, and the laws so passed 
have served their purpose up to the present 
time. 

The first Governor of the State was Henry 
H. Sibley, a Democrat. He served his term of 
two years, and the State has never elected a 
Democrat to that office since, unless the choice 
of Honorable John bind in 1898 may be so 
classified. 



ATTEMPT TO REMOVE THE CAPITAL. 

At the eighth session of the Legislative As- 
sembly of the Territory, which convened on 
January 7, 1857, a bill was introduced, the 
purpose of which was the removal of the seat 
of government from Saint Paul to Saint Peter, 
a small village which had recently come into 
existence on the Minnesota river about one 
hundred miles above its mouth. There could 
be no reason for such action except interested 
speculation, as the capitol was already built in 
Saint Paul, and it was much more accessible 
and in every way more convenient than it 
would be at St. Peter, but the movement had 
sufficient personal and political force behind 
ii to insure its success, and an act was passed 
making such removal. But it was destined to 
meet with unexpected obstacles before it be- 
came a law. When it passed the House it was 
sent to the council, where it only received one 
majority, eight voting for and seven against 
it. It was on the 27th of February sent to the 
enrolling committee for final enrollment. It 
happened that Councillor Joseph Rolette, from 
Pembina, was chairman of this committee, and 
a great friend of Saint Paul. Mr. Rolette de- 
cided he would veto the bill in a way not 
known tn parliamentary law, so he put it in his 
pocket and disappeared. On the 28th, not 
being in his seat, and the bill being missing, a 
councillor offered a resolution that a copy of 
it be obtained from Mr. Wales, the second in 
order on the committee. A call of the council 
was then ordered, and Mr, Rolette not beinj> in 
his seat, the serjeant-at-arms was sent out 
to bring him in, but not being able to find him, 
he so reported. A motion was then made to 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



55 



dispense with the call, but by the rules it re- 
quired a two-third vote of fifteen members, 
and in the absence of Mr. Rolette only fourteen 
were present. It takes as many to make two- 
thirds of fourteen as it does (o make two-thirds 
of fifteen, and the bill had only nine friends. 
During the pendency of a call no business 
could be transacted, and a serious dilemma 
confronted the capital removers, but nothing 
daunted, Mr. l.alcombe made a long argument 
to prove that nine was two-thirds of fourteen. 
Mr. Brisbin, who was president of the council 
and a graduate of Yale, pronounced the mo- 
tion lost, saying to the mover, who was also a 
graduate of Yale: "Mr. Balcombe, we never 
figured that way at Yale." This situation pro- 
duced a deadlock and no business could be 
transacted. The session terminated on the 
fifth day of March by its own limitation. The 
sergeant-at arms made daily reports concern- 
ing the whereabouts of the absentee, some- 
times locating him on a dog-train, rapidly mov- 
ing towards Pembina, sometimes giving a 
rumor of his assassination, but never produc- 
ing him. Matters remained in this condition 
until the end of the term, and the bill was lost. 
It was disclosed afterwards that Rolette had 
carefully deposited the bill in the vault of Tru- 
man M. Smith's bank and had passed the time 
in the upper story of the Fuller House, where 
his friends made him very comfortable. Some 
ineffectual efforts have been made since to 
remove the capital to Minneapolis and else- 
where, but the treaty, made by the pioneers in 
1849, locating it at St. Paul, is still in force. 



CENSUS. 

One of the provisions of the enabling act 
was, that in the event of the Constitutional 
Convention deciding in favor of the immediate 
admission of the proposed State into the 
Union, a census should be taken with a view 
of ascertaining the number of representatives 
in Congress to which the State would be en- 
titled. This was accordingly done in Septem- 
ber, 1857, and the population was found to be 
130,037. 



GRASSHOPPERS. 

The first visitation of grasshoppers came in 
1857, and did considerable damage to the crops 
in Stearns and other counties. Relief was 
asked from St. Paul for the suffering poor, and 
notwithstanding the people of the capital city 
were in the depths of poverty, from the finan- 
cial panic produced by over-speculation, they 
responded liberally. The grasshoppers of this 
year did not deposit their eggs, but disap- 
peared after eating up everything that came 
within their reach. The State was not troubled 
with them again until the year 1873, when they 
came in large flights and settled down in the 
western part of the State. They did much dam- 
age to I lie crops and deposited their eggs in thi 
soil, where they hatched out in the spring and 
greatly increased their number. They made 
sad havoc with the crops of 1874 and occupied 
a larger part of the State than in the previous 
year. They again deposited their eggs and ap- 
peared in the spring of 1S75 in increased num- 
bers. This was continued in 187G, when the 
situation became so alarming that Governor 
John S. Pillsbury issued a proclamation ad- 
dressed to the States and Territories which 
had suffered most from the insects, to meet him 
by delegates at Omaha to concert measures fin- 
united protection. A convention was held and 
Governor Pillsbury was made its president. 
The subject was thoroughly discussed and a 
memorial to Congress was prepared and 
adopted, asking for scientific investigation of 
the subject and a suggestion of preventative 
measures. 

Many appeals for relief came from the af- 
flicted regions and much aid was extended. 
Governor Pillsbury was a big-hearted, sympa- 
thetic man, and fearing the sufferers might not 
be well cared for he traveled among them per- 
sonally, incognito, and dispensed large sums 
from his private funds. 

In 1877 the Governor, in his message to the 
Legislature, treated the subject exhaustively, 
and appropriations were made to relieve the 
settlers in the devastated regions. In the early 
spring of 1877 the religious bodies and people 
of the State asked the Governor to issue a 



56 



1IISTOKY OF MINNESOTA. 



proclamation appointing a day of fasting and 
prayer, asking Divine protection, and exhort- 
ing the people to greater humility and a new 
consecration in the service of a merciful 
Father. The Governor, being of Puritan 
origin, and a faithful believer of Divine agen- 
cies in this world's affairs, issued an eloquent 
appeal to the people to observe a day named as 
one of fasting and prayer for deliverance from 
i he grasshoppers. The suggestion was quite 
generally acted upon, but the proclamation 
naturally excited much criticism and some ridi- 
cule. However, curious at it may seem, the 
grasshoppers, even before the day appointed 
for prayer arrived, began to disappear.and in a 
short time not one remained to show they had 
ever been iii the State. They left in a body; no 
one seemed to know exactly when they went, 
and no one knew anything about where they 
went, as they were never heard of again on any 
part of the Continent. The only news we ever 
had from them came from ships crossing tin- 
Atlantic westward bound, which reported hav- 
ing passed through large areas of floating in- 
sects. They must have met a western gale when 
well up in the air and have been blown out 
into the sea and destroyed. The people of Min- 
nesota did not expend much time or trouble to 
find out what had become of them. 

The crop of 1S77 was abundant, and particu- 
larly so in the region which had been most 
seriously blighted by the pests. 

Before the final proclamation of Governor 
Pillsbury every source of ingenuity had been 
exhausted in devising plans for the destruction 
of the grasshoppers. Ditches were dug around 
the fields of grain and ropes drawn over the 
grain to drive the hoppers into them, with the 
purpose of covering them with earth. Instru- 
ments called "hopperdozers" were invented, 
which had receptacles filled with hot tar, and 
were driven over the ground to catch them as 
Hies are caught with tanglefoot paper, and 
many millions of them were destroyed in this 
way. but it was abiut as effectual as fighting a 
Northwestern blizzard with a lady's fan, and 
they were all abandoned as useless and power- 
less lo cope with the scourge. Nothing proved 
effectual but the Governor's proclamation, and 



all the old settlers called it "Pillsbury's Best," 
which was the name of the celebrated brand of 
flour made at the Governor's mills. 

Frofessor N. II. Winchell, the State <jeolo- 
gist, in his geological and natural history re- 
port, presents a map which, by red lines, shows 
the encroachments of the grasshoppers for the 
years lS73-74-75-7C>. To gain an idea of the 
extent of the country covered by them up to 
1S77 draw a line on a State map from the Bed 
River of the North about six miles north of 
Moorhead in Clay county, in a southeasterly 
direction through Becker, Wadena, Todd and 
Morrison counties, crossing the Mississippi 
river near the northern line of Benton county, 
continuing down the east side of the Missis- 
sippi through Benton. Sherburne and Anoka 
counties, there re-crossing the Mississippi and 
proceeding south on the west side of the river 
to the south line of the State in Mower county. 
All the country lying south and west of this 
line was for several years devastated by the 
grasshoppers to the extent that no crops could 
be raised. It became for a time a question 
whether the people or the insects would con- 
quer the State. 



MILITIA. 



During the Territorial times there were a few 
volunteer militia companies in St. Paul, con- 
spicuously the Pioneer Guard, an infantry com- 
pany, which, from its excellent organization 
and discipline, became a source of supply of 
officers when regiments were being raised for 
the Civil War. To have been a member of that 
company was worth at least a captain's com- 
mission in the volunteer army, and many offi- 
cers of much higher rank were chosen from its 
members. 

There was also a company of cavalry at St. 
Paul, commanded by Capt. -lames Starkey, 
called the "St. Paul Light Cavalry." Also the 
"Shields Guards," commanded by Capt. John 
O'Gorman. There may have been others, but I 
do not remember them. The services of the 
Pioneer Guards and the cavalry company were 
called into requisition on two occasions, once 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



57 



in 1857 and again in 1859. During the summer 
of 1857 the settlers near Cambridge and Sun- 
rise complained that the Chippewas were very 
troublesome. Governor Medary ordered Cap- 
tain Starkey to take part of his company and 
arrest the Indians who were committing 
depredations, and send the remainder of them 
to their reservation. The Captain took twenty 
men, and on August 24, 1857, started for the 
.scene of the trouble. On the 28th he overtook 
some six or seven Indians, and in their attempt 
to escape a collision occurred, in which a young 
man, a member of Starkey's company, named 
Frank Donnelly, was instantly killed. The 
troops succeeded in killing one of the Indians, 
wounding another and capturing four more, 
when they returned to St. Paul, bringing with 
them the dead, wounded and prisoners. The 
dead were buried, the wounded healed and the 
prisoners discharged by Judge Nelson on a 
writ of habeas corpus. 

The general sentiment of the community was 
that the expedition was unnecessary and 
should never have been made. This affair was 
facetiously called the "Corn-stalk War." 



THE WRIGHT COUNTY WAR. 

In the fall of 1858 a man named Wallace was 
killed in Wright county. Oscar F. Jackson 
was tried for the murder in the spring of 1859 
and acquitted by a jury. Public sentiment was 
against him and he was warned to leave 
I lie county. He did not heed the admonition 
and on April 25 a mob assembled and hung 
Jackson to the gable end of Wallace's cabin. 
Governor Sibley offered a reward for the con- 
viction of any of the lynchers. Shortly after- 
wards, one Emery Moore was arrested as being 
implicated in the affair. He was taken to 
Wright county for trial and at once rescued by 
a mob. The Governor sent three companies of 
the militia to Monticello to arrest the offend- 
ers and preserve order, the Pioneer Guards 
being among them. This force, aided by a few 
special officers of the law. arrested eleven of 
the lynchers and rescuers and turned them 
over to the civil authorities, and on the 11th of 



August, 1859, having completed their mission, 
returned to St. Paul. As there was no war or 
bloodshed of any kind connected with this ex- 
pedition it was called the "Wright County 
War." 

Governor Sibley, having somewhat of a mili- 
tary tendency, appointed as his adjutant gen- 
eral Alexander C. Jones, who was a graduate 
of the Virginia Military Academy and captain 
of the Pioneer Guards. Under this administra- 
tion a very complete militia bill was passed on 
the 12th day of August, 1858. Minnesota from 
that time on had a very efficient militia system, 
until the establishment of the National Guard, 
which made some changes in its general char- 
acter, supposed to be for the better. 



THE CIVIL WAR. 



Nothing of any special importance occurred 
during the years 1859 and 1860 in Minnesota. 
The State continued to grow in population and 
wealth at an extraordinary pace, but in a quiet 
and unobtrusive way. The politics of the Na- 
tion had been for some time much disturbed 
between the North and the South on the ques- 
tion of slavery, and threats of secession from 
the Union made by the slave-holding States. 
The election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presi- 
dency of the United States in 1800 precipitated 
the impending revolution, and on the 14th 
of April, 1861, Fort Sumter, in the har- 
bor of Charleston, South Carolina, was 
fired upon by the revolutionists, which meant 
war between the two sections of the country. 
I will only relate such events in connection 
with the Civil War which followed as are espe- 
cially connected with Minnesota. 

When the news of the firing upon Fort Sum 
ter reached Washington, Alexander Ramsey, 
then Governor of Minnesota, was in that city. 
He immediately called on the President of the 
United States and tendered the services of the 
people of Minnesota in defense of the Republic, 
thus giving to the State the enviable position 
of being the first to come to the front. The 
offer of a regiment was accepted, and the Gov- 



5« 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



ernor sent a dispatch to Lieutenant Governor 
Ignatius Donnelly, who, on the 16th of April, 
issued a proclamation giving notice that volun- 
teers would be received at St. Paul for one regi- 
ment of infantry composed of ten companies, 
each of sixty-four privates, one captain, two 
lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals and 
one bugler, and that the volunteer companies 
already organized, upon complying with these 
requirements as to the numbers and officers, 
would be entitled to be first received. 

Immediately following this announcement, 
which, of course, meant war, great enthusiasm 
was manifested all over the State. Public 
meetings were held in all the cities; almost 
every man capable of doing soldier duty 
wanted to go, and those who were unable, for 
any reason, to go in person subscribed funds 
for the support of the families of those who 
volunteered. The only difficulty the authori- 
ties met with was an excess of men over those 
needed. There were a good many Southerners 
residing in the State, who were naturally con- 
trolled in their sentiments by their geograph- 
ical affinities, but they behaved very well and 
caused no trouble. They either entered the 
service of the South or held their peace. I can 
recall but one instance of a Northern man who 
had breathed the free air of Minnesota going 
over to the South, and the atrocity of his case 
was aggravated by the fact that he was an offi- 
cer in the United States army. I speak of Major 
Pemberton, who, at the breaking out of the 
war, was stationed at Fort Ridgely in this 
State, in command of a battery of artillery. He 
was ordered to Washington to aid in the de- 
fense of the capital, but before reaching his 
destination resigned his commission and ten- 
dered his sword to the enemy. I think he was 
a citizen of Pennsylvania. It was he who sur- 
rendered Vicksburg to the United States army, 
July 4, 1863. 

The first company raised under the call of 
the State was made up of young men of St. 
Paul and commanded by William H. Acker, 
who had been Adjutant General of the State. 
He was wounded at the first battle of Bull Run 
and killed at the battle of Shiloh, as captain of 
a company of the Sixteenth Regular Infantry. 



Other companies quickly followed in tendering 
their services. 

On the last Monday in April a camp for the 
first regiment was opened at Fort Snelling, and 
( 'apt. Anderson D. Nelson of the United States 
army mustered the regiment into the service. 
On the 27th of April John B. Sanborn, then Ad- 
jutant General of the State, in behalf of the 
Governor, issued the following order: "The 
Commander-in-chief expresses his gratification 
at the prompt response to the call of the Presi- 
dent of the United States upon the militia of 
Minnesota, and his regret that under the pres- 
ent requisition for only ten companies it is not 
possible to accept the services of all the com- 
panies offered." 

The order then enumerates the ten com- 
panies which have been accepted, and instructs 
them to report at Fort Snelling, and recom- 
mends that the companies not accepted main- 
tain their organization and perfect their drill, 
and that patriotic citizens throughout the 
State continue to enroll themselves and- be 
ready for any emergency. 

The Governor, on May ?>, sent a telegram to 
the President, offering a second regiment. 

The magnitude of the rebellion becoming 
rapidly manifest at Washington, the Secretary 
of War, Mr. Cameron, on the 7th of May, sent 
the following telegram to Governor Ramsey: 
"It is decidedly preferable that all the regi- 
ments from your State, not already actually 
sent forward, should be mustered into the serv- 
ice for three years, or during the war. If any 
persons belonging to the regiments already 
mustered for three months, but not yet actually 
sent forward, should be unwilling to serve for 
three years, or during the war, could not their 
places be filled by others willing to serve?" 

A great deal of correspondence passed be- 
tween Lieutenant Governor Donnelly at St. 
Paul and Governor Ramsey at Washington 
over the matter, which resulted in the First 
Minnesota Regiment being mustered into the 
service of the United States for three years, 
or during the war, on the 11th day of May, 
1861. Willis A. Gorman, second Governor of 
the Territory, was appointed colonel of the 
First. The Colonel was a veteran of the Mex 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



59 



ican War. The regiment when first mustered 
in was without uniform, except that some of 
the companies had red shirts and some blue, 
but there was no regularity whatever. This 
was of small consequence, as the material of 
the regiment was probably the best ever col- 
lected into one body. It included companies 
of lumbermen, accustomed to camp life and 
enured to hardships; men of splendid physique, 
experts with the axe; men who could make 
a road through a forest or swamp, build a 
bridge over a stream, run a steamboat, repair 
a railroad or perform any of the duties that 
are thrust upon an army on the march and 
in the field. There are no men in the world so 
well equipped naturally and without special 
preparation for the life of a soldier, as the 
American of the West. He is perfectly famil- 
iar with the use of firearms. From his varied 
experience he possesses more than an average 
intelligence. His courage goes without say- 
ing, and, to sum him up, he is the most all- 
around handy man on earth. 

< >n May 25th the ladies of Saint Paul pre- 
sented the regiment with a handsome set of 
silk colors. The presentation was made at the 
State Capitol by Mrs. Ramsey, the wife of the 
Governor. The speech was made on behalf of 
the ladies by Captain Stansbuiy. of Hie United 
States Army, and responded to by Colonel Gor- 
man in a manner fitting the occasion. 

On the 21st of June the regiment, having 
been ordered to Washington, embarked on the 
steamers "Northern Belle" and "War Eagle" 
at Fort Snelling for their journey. Before leav- 
ing the Fort the chaplain, Rev. Edward D. 
Neill, delivered a most impressive address, con- 
cluding as follows: 



"Soldiers: If you would be obedient to God 
you must honor him who has been ordained to 
lead you forth. Your colonel's will must be 
your will. If. like the Roman centurion, he 
says 'Go,' you must go. If he says 'Come,' come 
you must. God grant you all the Hebrew's en- 
during faith, and you will be sure to have the 
Hebrew's valor. Now with the Hebrew's bene- 
diction, I close. 

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord 
make his face shine upon you and be gracious 



to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon 
you and give you peace. Amen." 

The peace the good chaplain asked the Lord 
to give to the regiment was that peace which 
Hows from duty well performed, and a con- 
science free from self-censure. Judging from 
the excellent record made by that regiment, it 
enjoyed this kind of peace to the fullest extent, 
but it had as little of the other kind of peace as 
any regiment in the service. 

The regiment reached Washington early in 
duly and went into camp near Alexandria in 
Virginia. It took part in the first battle of the 
war, at Bull Run, and from there to the end of 
the war was engaged in many battles, always 
with credit to itself and honor to its State. It 
was conspicuously brave and useful at the 
great conflict at Gettysburg, and the service it 
there performed made its fame world-wide. In 
what I say of the First Regiment, I must not be 
understood to lessen the fame of the other ten 
regiments and other organizations that Minne- 
sota sent to the war, all of which, with the ex- 
ception of the Third, made for themselves rec- 
ords of gallantry and soldierly conduct, which 
Minnesota will ever hold in the highest esteem. 
But the First, probably because it was the first, 
and certainly because of its superb career, will 
always be the pet and especial pride of the 
State. 

The misfortunes of the Third Regiment will 
be spoken of separately. 

The first conception of the rebellion by the 
authorities in Washington was that it could be 
suppressed in a short time; but they had left 
out of the estimate the fact that they had to 
dial with Americans, who can always be 
counted on for a stubborn fight when they de- 
cide to have one. And as the magnitude of the 
war impressed itself upon the government, con- 
tinuous calls for troops were made, to all of 
which Minnesota responded promptly, until she 
had in the field the following military organiza- 
tions: 

Eleven full regiments of infantry. 
The first and second companies of sharp- 
shooters. 



6o 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



One regiment of mounted rangers, recruited 
for the Indian War. 

The Second Regiment of cavalry. 

Hatcke's Independent Battalion of Cavalry 
for Indian War. 

Brackett's Battalion of cavalry. 

One regiment of heavy artillery. 

The First, Second and Third Batteries of 
Light Artillery. 

There were embraced in these twenty-one 
military organizations 22,070 officers and men 
who were withdrawn from the forces of civil 
industry and remained away for several years. 
Yet, notwithstanding Ibis abnormal drain on 
the industrial resources of so young a State, to 
which must be added the exhaustive effects of 
the Indian War, which broke out within her 
borders in 1862, and lasted several years, Min- 
nesota continued to grow in population and 
wealth throughout it all, and came out of these 
war afflictions strengthened and invigorated. 



THE THIRD REGIMENT. 

Recruiting for the Third Regiment com- 
menced earlj' in the fall of 1861, and was com- 
pleted by the 15th of November, on which day 
it consisted of nine hundred and one men all 
told, including officers. On the 17th of Novem- 
ber, 1861, it embarked at Fort Snelling for its 
destination in the South, on the steamboats 
Northern Belle, City Belle and Frank Steele. 
It landed at St. Raul and marched through the 
city, exciting the admiration of the people, it 
being an unusually fine aggregation of men. It 
embarked on the same day and departed for 
the South, carrying with it the good wishes and 
hopes of every citizen of the State. It was 
then commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Smith, 
and afterwards by Col. Henry C. Lester, who 
was promoted to its command from a captaincy 
in the First, and joined his regiment at Shep- 
ardsville. Colonel Lester was a man of pre- 
possessing appearance, handsome, well-in- 
formed, modest and attractive. He soon 
brought his regiment up to a high standard of 
drill and discipline, and especially devoted 



himself to its appearance for cleanliness and 
deportment, so that his regiment became re- 
markable in these particulars. By the 12th of 
July the Third became brigaded with the Ninth 
Michigan, the Eighth and Twenty-third Ken- 
tucky, forming the Twenty-third Brigade under 
Col. W. W. Duffield of the Ninth Michigan, and 
was stationed at Murfreesboro in Tennessee. 
For two months Colonel Duffield had been ab- 
sent, and the brigade and other forces at Mur- 
freesboro had been commanded by Colonel Les- 
ter. A day or two before the 13th Colonel Duf- 
field had returned and resumed command of 
the brigade, and Lester was again in direct 
command of his regiment. In describing the 
situation at Murfreesboro on the 13th of July, 
1861, Gen. C. C. Andrews, the author of the 
History of the Third Regiment, in the State 
War Book, at page 152, says: 

"The force of enlisted men fit for duty at 
Murfreesboro was fully one thousand. Forest 
reported that the whole number of enlisted 
men captured, taken to McMinnville and pa- 
roled, was between 1,100 and 1,200. Our forces, 
however, were separated. There were five com- 
panies, two hundred and fifty strong, of the 
Ninth Michigan in camp three-fourths of a mile 
east of the town, on the Liberty turnpike 
(another company of the Ninth Michigan, forty- 
two strong, occupied the Court House as a pro- 
vost guard); near the camp of the Ninth Michi- 
gan were eighty men of the Seventh Pennsyl- 
vania < !avalry under Major Seibert. also eighty- 
one men of the Fourth Kentucky Cavalry 
under Captain Chilson. More than a mile dis- 
tant, on the other side of the town, on undu- 
lating rocky and shaded ground near Stone 
river, were nine companies of the Third Minne- 
sota, live hundred strong. Near it also, two 
sections — four guns — of Hewitt's Kentucky 
Field Artillery with sixty-four men for duty. 
Forty-five men of Company C, Third Regiment, 
under Lieutenant Grumiuons, had gone the 
afternoon of July 12th as the guard on a sup 
plv train to Shelbvville, and had not returned 
on' the 13th." 

Murfreesboro was on the Nashville & Chat- 
tanooga railroad. It was a well-built town 
around a square, in the center of which was the 
couri house. There were in the t >\\n valuable 
military stores. 

July 13, at daybreak, news arrived at Mur 



HISTORY OP MINNESOTA. 



61 



freesboro that the Rebel general, Forest, was 
about to make an attack on the place, which 
news was verified by General Forest capturing 
the picket guard and dashing into the town 
soon after the news arrived, with a mounted 
force of 1,500 men. A part of this force charged 
upon the camp of the Seventh Pennsylvania, 
then re-formed and charged upon the Nintb 
Michigan infantry, which made a gallant de- 
fense and repulsed the enemy's repeated 
charges, suffering a loss of eleven killed and 
eighty-nine wounded. The enemy suffered 
considerable loss, including a colonel killed, up 
to about noon, when the Ninth Michigan sur- 
rendered. General Crittenden was captured in 
his quarters about eight o'clock. Almost simul- 
taneous with the first attack, a part of Forest's 
force moved toward the Third Minnesota, 
which had sprung up at the first sound of the 
firing, formed into line, Colonel Lester in com- 
mand, and with two guns of Hewitt's Battery 
on each flank, marched in the direction of Mur- 
freesboro. It had not gone more than an eighth 
of a mile when about three hundred of the 
enemy appeared, approaching on a gallop. 
They were moving in some disorder, and ap- 
peared to fall back when the Third Regiment 
came in sight. The latter was at once brought 
forward into line and the guns of Hewitt's Bat- 
tery opened fire. The enemy retired out of 
sight, and the Third advanced to a command- 
ing position in the edge of some timber. A 
continuous fire was kept up by the guns of 
Hewitt's Battery, with considerable effect upon 
the enemy. Up to this time the only ground of 
discontent that had ever existed in this regi- 
ment was that it had never had an opportunity 
to fight. Probably no regiment was ever more 
eager to fight in battle than this one. Yet 
while it was there in line of battle from day- 
light until about noon, impatiently waiting for 
the approach of the enemy, or what was better, 
to be led against him, he was assailing an in- 
ferior force of our troops and destroying valu- 
able commissary and quartermaster's stores in 
town, which our troops were, of course, in 
honor bound to protect. The regiment was 
kept standing or lying motionless hour after 
hour, even while plainly seeing the smoke ris- 



ing from the burning depot of the United 
States supplies. While this was going on 
Colonel Lester sat upon his horse and different 
officers went to him and entreated him to 
march the regiment into town. The only re- 
sponse he gave was, "We will see." The enemy 
made several ineffectual attempts to charge 
the line held by the Third, but were driven off 
with loss, which only increased the ardor of 
the men to get at them. The enemy attacked 
the camp of the Third, which was guarded by 
only a few convalescents, teamsters and cooks, 
and met with a stubborn resistance, but finally 
succeeded in taking it and burning the tents 
and property of the officers, after which they 
hastily abandoned it. The firing at the camp 
was distinctly heard by the Third Regiment, 
and Captain Hoyt of Company B asked permis- 
sion to take his company to protect the camp, 
but was refused. While the regiment was in 
this waiting position, having at least five hun- 
dred effective men, plenty of ammunition, and 
burning with anxiety to get at the enemy, a 
white flag appeared over the crest of a hill, 
which proved to be a request for Colonel Lester 
to go into Murfreesboro for a consultation with 
Colonel Duffield. General Forest carefully dis- 
played his men along the path by which Col- 
onel Lester was to go in a manner so as to im- 
press the Colonel with the idea that he had a 
much larger force than really existed, and in 
his demand for surrender he stated that if not 
acceded to the whole command would be put 
to the sword, as he could not control his men. 
This was an old trick of Forest's, which he 
played successfully on other occasions. From 
what is known, he had not over one thousand 
men with which he could have engaged the 
Third that day. 

When Colonel Lester returned to his regi- 
ment his mind was fully made up to surrender; 
a consultation was held with the officers of the 
regiment, and a vote taken on the question, 
which resulted in a majority being in favor of 
fighting and against surrender, but the matter 
was re-opened and re-argued by the Colonel, 
and after some of the officers who opposed sur- 
render had left the council and gone to their 
companies, another vote was taken, which re- 



62 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



suited in favor of the surrender. The officers 
who, on this final vote, were against surrender 
were Lieutenant Colonel Griggs and Captains 
Andrews and Hoyt. Those who voted in favor 
of surrender were Captains Webster, Gurnee, 
Preston, Clay and Mills of the Third Regiment, 
and Captain Hewitt of the Kentucky Battery. 

On December 1, an order was made dismiss- 
ing from the service the five captains of the 
Third who voted to surrender the regiment, 
which order was subsequently revoked as to 
Captain Webster. 

The conduct of Colonel Lester on this occa- 
sion has been accounted for on various theories. 
Before this he had been immensely popular 
with his regiment and also at home in Minne- 
sota, and his prospects were most brilliant. It 
is hard to believe that he was actuated by cow- 
ardice, and harder to conceive him guilty of 
disloyalty to his country. An explanation of 
his actions which obtained circulation in Min- 
nesota was that he had fallen in love with a 
Rebel woman, who exercised such influence 
and control over him, as to completely hypno- 
tize his will. I have always been a convert to 
that theory, knowing the man as well as I did, 
and have settled the question as the French 
would, by saying "Cherchez la femme." 

General Buell characterized the surrender in 
general orders as one of the most disgraceful 
examples in the history of wars. 

What a magnificent opportunity was pre- 
sented to some officer of that regiment to im- 
mortalize himself by shooting the Colonel 
through the head while he was ignominiously 
dallying with the question of surrender, and 
calling upon the men to follow him against the 
enemy. There can be very little doubt that 
such a movement would have resulted in vic- 
tory, as the men were in splendid condition 
physically, thoroughly well armed and dying to 
wipe out the disgrace their Colonel had in- 
flicted upon them. Of course, the man who 
should inaugurate such a movement must win, 
or die in the attempt, but in America death 
with honor is infinitely preferable to life with 
a suspicion of cowardice, as all who partici- 
pated in this surrender were well aware. 

The officers were all held as prisoners of war 



and the men paroled on condition of not fight- 
ing against the Confederacy during the contin- 
uance of the war. The Indian War of 1862 
broke out in Minnesota very shortly after the 
surrender, and the men of the Third were 
brought to the State for service against the 
Indians. They participated in the campaign of 
1862 and following expeditions. For a full and 
detailed account of the surrender of the Third 
consult the history of that regiment in the vol- 
ume issued by the Stale, railed "Minnesota in 
the Civil and Indian Wars." 

It would please the historian to omit this 
subject entirely did truth permit; but he finds 
ample solace in the fact that this is the only 
blot to be found in the long record of brilliant 
and glorious deeds that compose the military 
history of Minnesota. 

A general summary will show that Minne- 
sota did her whole duty in the Civil War, and 
that her extreme youth was in no way a draw- 
back to her performance. She furnished to the 
war in all her military organizations a grand 
total of 22,970 men. Of this number, six hun- 
dred and seven were killed in battle and 1,G47 
died of disease, making a contribution of 2,254 
lives to the cause of the Union, on the part of 
Minnesota. 

Our State was honored by the promotion 
fi'om her various organizations of the following 
general officers: 



C. P. Adams, Brevet Brigadier General. 

C. C. Andrews, Brigadier and Brevet Major 
General. 

John T. Averill, Brevet Brigadier General. 

James H. Baker, Brevet Brigadier General. 

Theodore E. Barret, Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 

Judson W. Bishop, Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 

William Colville, Brevet Brigadier General. 

Napoleon J. T. Dana, Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 

Alonzo J. Edgerton, Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 

Willis A. Gorman, Brevet Brigadier General. 

Lucius F. Hubbard. Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 

Samuel P. Jennison, Brigadier General. 

William Le Due, Brigadier General. 

William R. Marshall, Brigadier General. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



63 



Robert B. McLaren, Brigadier General. 

Stephen Miller, Brigadier General. 

John B. Sanborn, Brigadier and Brevet 
Major General. 

Henry H. Sibley, Brigadier and Brevet Major 
General. 

Minor T. Thomas, Brevet Brigadier General. 

John E. Tourtellotte, Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 

Horatio P. Van Cleve, Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 

George N. Morgan, Brevet Brigadier Gen- 
eral. 



THE INDIAN WAR OF 1862 AND FOL- 
LOWING YEARS. 

In 1S62 there were in the State of Minnesota 
four principal bands of Sioux Indians. The 
Me-de-wa-kon-toiis, and Wak-pa-koo-tas, and 
the Si-si-tons and Wak-pay-tons. The first two 
bands were known as the Lower Sioux and the 
last two as the Upper Sioux. These designa- 
tions arose from the fact that in the sale of 
their lands to the United Slates by the treaties 
of 1851, the lands of the Lower Sioux were sit- 
uated in the southern part of the State, and 
those of the upper bands in the northern part, 
and when a reservation was set apart for their 
future occupation on the upper waters of the 
Minnesota river they were similarly located 
1 hereon. Their reservation consisted of a strip 
of land ten miles wide on each side of the Min- 
nesota river, beginning at a point a few miles 
below Fort Ridgely and extending to the head- 
waters of the river. The reservation of the 
lower bands extended up to the Yellow Medi- 
cine river; that of the upper bands included all 
above the last named river. An agent was ap- 
pointed to administer the affairs of these In- 
dians, whose agencies were established at Red- 
wood for the lower, and at Yellow Medicine for 
the upper bands. At these agencies the annui- 
ties were regularly paid to the Indians, and so 
continued from the making of the treaties to 
the year 1802. These bands were wild, very 
little progress having been made in their civili- 
zation, the very nature of the situation pre- 
venting very much advance in that line. The 
whole country to the north and west of their 



reservation was an open, wild region, extend- 
ing to the Rocky mountains, inhabited only by 
the buffalo, which animals ranged in vast herds 
from British Columbia to Texas. The buffalo 
was the chief subsistence of the Indians, who 
naturally frequented their ranges, and only 
came to the agencies when expecting their pay- 
ments. When they did come, and the money 
and goods were not ready for them, which was 
frequently the case, they suffered great incon- 
venience and were forced to incur debt with the 
white traders for their subsistence, all of which 
tended to create bad feelings between them 
and the whites. The Indian saw that he had 
yielded a splendid domain to the whites, and 
that they were rapidly occupying it. They 
could not help seeing that the whites were 
pushing them gradually — I may say rapidly— 
out of their ancestral possessions and towards 
the West, which know ledge naturally created 
a hostile feeling towards the whites. The 
Sioux were a brave people, and the young fight- 
ing men were always making comparisons be- 
tween themselves and the whites, and banter- 
ing each other as to whether they were or were 
not afraid of them. I made a study of these 
people for several years, having had them in 
charge as their agent, and I think understood 
their feelings and standing towards the whites 
as well as any one. Much has been said and 
written about the immediate cause of the out- 
break of 18G2, but I do not believe that any- 
thing can be assigned out of the general course 
of events that will account for the trouble. De- 
lay, as usual, had occurred in the arrival of the 
money for the payment which was due in July, 
1862. The war was in full force with the South, 
and the Indians saw that Minnesota was send- 
ing thousands of men out of the State to fight 
the battles of the Union. Major Thomas Gal- 
luaith was their agent in the summer of 1862, 
and being desirous of contributing to the vol- 
unteer forces of the government he raised a 
company of half-breeds on the reservation and 
started with them for Fort Snelling, the gen- 
eral rendezvous, to have them mustered into 
service. It was very natural that the Indians 
who were seeking trouble should look upon this 
movement as a sign of weakness on the part of 



64 



HISTORY OP MINNESOTA. 



the government, and reason that if the United 
Slates could not conquer its enemy without 
their assistance it must be in serious difficul- 
ties. Various things of similar character con- 
tributed to create a feeling among the Indians 
that it was a good time to recover their coun- 
try, redress all their grievances and reestab- 
lish themselves as buds of the land. They had 
ambitious leaders; Little Crow was the princi- 
pal instigator of war on the whites. He was a 
man of greater parts than any Indian in the 
tribe. I had used him on many trying occa- 
sions as the captain of my body-guard, and my 
ambassador to negotiate with other tribes, and 
always found him equal to any emergency, but 
on this occasion his ambition ran away with 
his judgment and led him to fatal results. With 
all these influences at work, it took but a spark 
to fire the magazine, and that spark was struck 
on the 17th day of August, 1862. 

A small party of Indians were at Acton, on 
August 17, and got into a petty controversy 
with a settler about some eggs, which created 
a difference of opinion among them as to what 
they should do, some advocating one course 
and some another. The controversy led to one 
Indian saying that the other was afraid of the 
white man. to resent which, and to prove his 
bravery, he killed the settler, and the whole 
family was massacred. When these Indians 
reached the agency and related their bloody 
work, those who wanted trouble seized upon 
the opportunity and insisted that the only way 
• ml of the difficulty was to kill all the whites, 
and on the morning of the IStli of August the 
bloody work began. 

It is proper to say here that some of the In- 
dians who were connected with the mission- 
aries, conspicuously An-pay-tu-tok a-cha, or 
John Otherday, and Paul Ma-za-ku-ta-ma-ni, 
the president of the Hazelwood Republic, of 
which I have spoken, having learned of the 
intention of the Indians, informed the mission- 
aries on the night of the 17th, who, to the num- 
ber of about sixty, fled eastward to Hutchin- 
son, in McLeod county, and escaped. The next 
morning, being the 1 si h of August, the Indians 
commenced the massacre of the whites, and 
made clean work of all at the agencies. They 



then separated into small squads of from five 
to ten and spread over the country to the south, 
easl and southeast, attacking the settlers in 
detail at their homes and continued this work 
during all of the 18th and part of the 19th of 
August until they had murdered in cold blood 
quite one thousand people — men, women and 
children. The way the work was conducted 
was as follows: The party of Indians would 
call at the house of a settler and the Indians 
being well known, this would cause no alarm. 
They would await a good opportunity and 
shoot the man of the family, then butcher the 
women and children, and, after carrying off 
everything that they thought valuable to them, 
they would burn the house, proceed to the 
next homestead and repeat the performance. 
Occasionally some one would escape and 
spread the news of the massacre to the neigh- 
bors, and all who could would flee to some 
place of refuge. 

The news of the outbreak reached Fort 
Ridgely, which was situated about thirteen 
miles down the Minnesota river from the 
agencies, about eight o'clock on the morning of 
the 18th, by means of the arrival of a team 
from the lower agency, bringing a badly 
wo'unded man, but no details could be obtained. 
The fort was in command of Capt. John F. 
Marsh of Company R, Fifth Minnesota Volun- 
teer Infantry. He had eighty-five men in his 
company, from which he selected forty-five, 
leaving the balance, under Lieut. T. 
F. Gere, to defend the fort. This little 
squad under command of Captain Marsh, 
with a full supply of ammunition, pro- 
visions, blankets, etc., accompanied by a 
six-mule team, left the fort at nine A. 
M. on the 18th of August for the lower 
Sioux agency, which was on the west side of 
the .Minnesota river, the fort being on the east, 
which necessitated the crossing of the river by 
a ferry near the agency. On the march up, the 
command passed nine or ten dead bodies, all 
bearing evidence of having been murdered by 
the Indians, one of which was Dr. Humphrey, 
surgeon at the agency. On reaching the vicin- 
ity of the ferry, no Indians were in sight, ex 
cept one on the opposite side of the river, who 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



65 



tried to induce them to cross over. A dense 
chaparral bordered the river on the agency 
side, and tall grass covered the bottom on the 
side where the troops were. Suspicion of the 
presence of Indians was aroused by the dis- 
turbed condition of the water of the river, 
which was muddy and contained floating grass. 
Then a group of ponies was seen. At this 
point, and without any notice whatever, In- 
dians in great numbers sprang up on 
all sides of the troops and opened upon 
them a deadly fire. About half of the 
men were killed instantly. Finding them- 
selves surrounded, it became with the sur- 
vivors a question of sauve qui peut. Several 
desperate hand-to-hand encounters occurred 
with varying results, when the remnant of the 
command made a point down the river about 
two miles from the ferry, Captain Marsh being 
of the number. Here they attempted to cross, 
but the Captain was drowned in the effort and 
only from thirteen to fifteen of the command 
reached the fort alive. Among those killed was 
Peter Quinn, the United States interpreter, an 
Irishman who had been in the Indian Territory 
for many years. He had married into the Chip- 
pewa tribe. He was a man much esteemed by 
the army and all old settlers. 

Much criticism has been indulged in as to 
whether Captain Marsh, when he became con- 
vinced of the general outbreak, should not 
have retreated to the fort. Of course, forty-five 
men could do nothing against five or six hun- 
dred warriors, who were known to be at or 
about the agency. The Duke of Wellington, 
when asked as to what was the best test of a 
general, said, "To know when to retreat, and to 
dare to do it." Captain Marsh cannot be justly 
judged by any such criterion. He was not an 
experienced general. He was a young, brave 
and enthusiastic soldier. He knew little of In- 
dians. The country knows that he thought he 
was doing his duty in advancing. I am confi- 
dent, whether this judgment is intelligent or 
not, posterity will hold in warmer esteem the 
memory of Captain Marsh and his gallant little 
band than if he had adopted the more prudent 
course of retracing his steps. General George 
Custer was led into an ambush of almost the 



exact character, which was prepared for him 
by many of the same Indians who attacked 
Marsh, and he lost five companies of the Sev- 
enth United States Cavalry, one of the best 
fighting regiments in the service, not a man 
escaping. 

Immediately previous to the outbreak Lieut. 
Timothy J. Sheehan, of Company C, Fifth 
Minnesota, had been sent with about fifty men 
of his company to the Yellow Medicine agency 
on account of some disorder prevailing among 
the Indians, but having performed his duty, he 
had been ordered to Fort Ripley, and had, on 
the 17th, left Fort Ridgely, and on the 18th 
had reached a point near Glencoe, distant from 
Fort Ridgely about forty miles. As soon as 
Captain Marsh became aware of the outbreak 
he sent the following dispatch to Lieutenant 
Sheehan, which reached him on the evening of 
the 18th: 
"Lieutenant Sheehan: 

"It is absolutely necessary that you should 
return with your command immediately to this 
post. The Indians are raising hell at the low- 
er agency. Return as soon as possible." 

Lieutenant Sheehan was then a young Irish- 
man, of about twenty-nve years of age, with 
immense physical vigor and corresponding en- 
thusiasm. He immediately broke camp and 
returned to the fort, arriving there on the 19th 
of August, having made a forced march of 
forty-two miles in nine and one-half hours. He 
did not arrive a moment too soon. Being the 
ranking officer after the death of Captain 
Marsh, he took command of the post. The gar- 
rison then consisted of the remnant of Marsh's 
Company B, 51 men; Sheehan's Company 
C, 50 men; Renville Rangers, 50 men. This 
company was the one raised by Major Gal- 
braith, the Sioux agent at the agencies, and 
was composed principally of half-breeds. It 
was commanded by Capt. James Gorman. 
On reaching St. refer, on its way down to Fort 
Snelling to be mustered into the service of the 
L'liited States, it learned of the outbreak, and 
at once returned to Ridgely, having appro- 
priated the arms of a militia company at St. 
Peter. There was also at Ridgely Sergeant 
Jones of the regular artillery, who had been 



66 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



left there in charge of the military stores. He 
was quite an expert gunner, and there were 
several field-pieces at the fort. Besides this 
garrison a large number of people from the 
sui rounding country had sought safety at the 
fort, and there was also a party of gentlemen 
who had brought up the annuity money to pay 
the Indians, who, learning of the troubles, had 
stopped with the money, amounting to some 
|70,000 in specie. I will here leave the fort for 
the present, and turn to other points that be- 
came prominent in the approaching war. 

On the night of the ISth of August, the day 
of the outbreak, the news reached St. Peter, 
and as I have before stated, induced the Ren- 
ville Rangers to retrace their steps. Great ex- 
citement prevailed, as no one could tell at what 
moment the Indians might dash into the town 
ami massacre the inhabitants. 

The people at New Ulm, which was situated 
about sixteen miles below Fort Ridgely, on the 
Minnesota river, dispatched a courier to St. 
Peter as soon as they became aware of the 
trouble. He arrived at four o'clock A. M. ou 
I he 19th, and came immediately to my house, 
which was about one mile below the town, and 
informed me that the Indians were killing peo- 
ple all over the country. Having lived among 
the Indians for several years, and at one time 
had charge of them as their agent, I thor- 
oughly understood the danger of the situation, 
and knowing, that whether the story was true 
or false, the frontier was no place at such a 
time for women and children, I told him to 
wake up the people at St. Peter, and that I 
would be there quickly. I immediately placed 
my family in a wagon and told them to flee 
down the river, and taking all the guns, pow- 
der and lead I could find in my house, I arrived 
at St. Peter about six A. M. The men of the 
town were soon assembled at the court house, 
and in a very short time a company was formed 
of one hundred and sixteen men, of which I 
was chosen as captain, ^Villiam B. Dodd as 
first and Wolf H. Meyer as second lieutenant. 
Before noon two men, Henry A. Swift, after- 
wards Governor of the State, and William C. 
Hayden, were dispatched to the front in a 
buggy to scout and locate the enemy if he was 



near, and about noon sixteen mounted men 
under L. M. Boardman, sheriff of the county, 
were stalled on a similar errand. Both these 
squads kept moving until they reached New 
Ulm, at about five P. M. 

Great activity was displayed in equipping 
the main body of the company for service. All 
(ho guns of the place were seized and put into 
the hands of the men. There not being any 
large game in this part of the country, rifles 
were scarce, but shot-guns were abundant. All 
the blacksmith shops and gun-shops were set 
at work molding bullets, and we soon had a 
gun in every man's hand, and he was supplied 
with a powder horn or a whiskey flask full of 
powder, a box of caps and a pocketful of bul- 
lets. We impressed all the wagons we needed 
for transportation and all the blankets and 
provisions that were necessary for subsistence 
and comfort. While these preparations wen 
going on a large squad from Le Sueur, ten 
miles further down the river, under the com- 
mand of Captain Tousley, sheriff of Le Sueur 
county, joined us. Early in the day a squad 
from Swan Lake, under an old settler named 
Samuel Coffin, had gone to New Ulm to see 
what was the matter. 

Our advance guard reached New Ulm just 
in time to participate in its defense against an 
attack of about one hundred Indians who had 
been murdering the settlers on the west side 
ol the river, between the town and Fort Ridge- 
ly. The inhabitants of New Ulm were almost 
exclusively German, there being only a few 
English speaking citizens among them, and 
they were not familiar with the character of 
the Indians, but the instinct of self-preserva- 
tion had impelled them to fortify the town 
with barricades to keep the enemy out. The 
town was built in the usual way of western 
towns, the principal settlement being along 
the main street, and the largest and best 
houses occupying a space of about three blocks. 
Some of these houses were of brick and stone, 
so with a strong barricade around them the 
town was quite defensible. Several of the peo- 
ple were killed in this first attack, but the In- 
dians, knowing of the coming reinforcements, 
withdrew, after firing five or six buildings. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



67 



The main body of my company, together 
with the squad from Le Sueur, reached the 
ferry about two miles below the settled part 
of New Ulm, about eight P. M., having made 
thirty-two miles in seven hours, in a drenching 
rainstorm. The blazing houses in the distance 
gave a very threatening aspect to the situa- 
tion, but we crossed the ferry successfully, and 
made the town without accident. The next 
day we were reinforced by a full company 
from Mankato under Capt. William Bier- 
bauer. Several companies were formed from 
the citizens of the town. A full company from 
South Bend arrived on the 20th or 21st, and 
various other squads, greater or less in num- 
bers, came in during the week, before Saturday 
the 23rd, swelling our forces to about three 
hundred men, but nearly all very poorly armed. 
We improved the barricades and sent out daily 
scouting parties, who succeeded in bringing 
in many people who were in hiding, in swamps, 
and who would have undoubtedly been lost 
without this succor. It soon became apparent 
that to maintain any discipline or order in the 
town some one man must be placed in com- 
mand of the entire force. The officers of the 
various companies assembled to choose a com- 
mander in chief, and the selection fell to me. 
A provost guard was at once established, order 
inaugurated, and we awaited events. 

I have been thus particular in my descrip- 
tion of the movements at this point, because ii 
gives an idea of the defenseless condition in 
which the outbreak found the people of the 
country, and also because it shows the intense 
energy with which the settlers met the emer- 
gency, at its very inception, from which I will 
deduce the conclusion at the proper time that 
this prompt initial action saved the State from 
a calamity the magnitude of which is unre- 
corded in the history of Indian wars. 

Having described the defensive condition of 
Fort Ridgely and New Ulm, the two extreme 
frontier posts, the former being on the Indian 
Reservation and the latter only a few miles 
southeast of it, I will take up the subject at 
the capital of the State. The news reached 
Governor Ramsey at Saint Paul on the 19th of 
August, the second day of the outbreak. He 



at once hastened to Mendota, at the mouth of 
the Minnesota river, and requested ex-Gov- 
ernor Sibley to accept the command of such 
forces as could be put in the field to check the 
advance of and punish the Indians. Governor 
Sibley had a large experience with the Sioux, 
perhaps more (linn any man in the Slate, hav- 
ing traded and lived with them since 1834, and 
besides that, was a distinguished citizen of the 
State, having been its first Governor. He ac- 
cepted the position with the rank of colonel 
in the State Militia. The Sixth regiment was 
being recruited at Fort Snelling for the Civil 
War, and on the 20th of August Colonel Sibley 
started up the Valley of the Minnesota willi 
four companies of that regiment, and arrived 
at St. Peter on Friday, the 22nd. Capt. A. O. 
Nelson of the regular army had been appointed 
colonel of the Sixth, and 'William Crooks had 
been appointed lieutenant colonel of the Sev- 
enth. Colonel Crooks conveyed the orders of 
the Governor to Colonel Nelson, overtaking 
him at Bloomington ferry. On receipt of his 
orders, finding he was to report to Colonel Sib- 
ley, he made the point of military etiquette, 
that an officer of the regular army could not re- 
port to an officer of militia of the same rank, 
and turning over his command to Colonel 
Crooks, he returned to St. Paul and handed in 
his resignation. It was accepted, and Colonel 
Crooks was appointed colonel of the Sixth. 
Not knowing much about military etiquette, 
I will not venture an opinion on the action of 
Colonel Nelson in this instance, but it always 
seemed to me that in the face of the enemy, 
and especially considering the high standing 
of Colonel Sibley, and the intimate friendship 
that exisled between the two men, it would 
have been better to have waived this point and 
unitedly fought the enemy, settling all such 
matters afterwards. 

On Sunday, the 24th, Colonel Sibley's force 
at St. Peter was augmented by the arrival of 
about two hundred mounted men under the 
command of William J. Cullen, formerly super- 
intendent of Indian Affairs, called the Cullen 
Guard. On the same day six more companies 
of the Sixth arrived, making up the full regi- 
ment, and also about one hundred more 



68 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



mounted men, and several squads of volunteer 
militia. The mounted men were placed under 
the command of Col. Samuel McPhail. By 
these acquisitions Colonel Sibley's command 
numbered about 1.400 men. Although the nu- 
merical strength was considerable, the com- 
mand was practically useless. The ammuni- 
tion did not fit the guns of the Sixth Regi- 
ment, and had to be all made over. The horses 
of the mounted men, and the men themselves, 
were inexperienced, undisciplined, and practi- 
cally unarmed. It was the best the country 
afforded, but probably about as poorly 
equipped an army as ever entered the field, to 
face what I regard as the best warriors to be 
found on the North American continent; but 
fortunately the officers and men were all that 
could be desired. The leaders of this army 
were the best of men, and being seconded by 
intelligent and enthusiastic subordinates, they 
soon overcame their physical difficulties, but 
they knew nothing of the strength, position or 
previous movements of the enemy, no news 
having reached them from either Fort Ridgely 
or New Ulm. Any mistake made by this force 
resulting in defeat would have been fatal. No 
such mistake was made. Having now shown 
the principal forces in the field, we will turn 
to the movements of the enemy. The Indians 
felt that it would be necessary to carry Fort 
Ridgely and New Ulm before they extended 
their depredations further down the Valley of 
the Minnesota, and concentrated their forces 
for an attack on the fort. Ridgely was in no 
sense a fort. It was simply a collection of 
buildings, principally frame structures, facing 
in towards the parade ground. On one side 
was a long stone barrack and a stone commis- 
sary building, which was the only defensible 

part of it. 

• 

THE ATTACK ON FORT RIDGELY. 

On the 20th of August, at about three P. M., 
an attack was made upon the fort by a large 
body of Indians. The first intimation the gar- 
rison had of the assault was a volley poured 
through one of (he openings between the build- 
ings. Considerable confusion ensued, but or- 



der was soon restored. Sergeant Jones 
attempted to use his cannon, but, to his utter 
dismay, lie found them disabled. This was the 
work of some of the half-breeds belonging to 
the Renville Rangers, who had deserted to the 
enemy. They had been spiked by ramming old 
rags into them. The Sergeant soon rectified 
this difficulty, and brought his pieces into ac- 
tion. The attack lasted three hours, when it 
rcased, with a loss to the garrison of three 
killed and eight wounded. 

On Thursday, the 21st, two further attacks 
were made on the fort, one in the morning and 
one in the afternoon, but with a reduced force, 
less earnestness, and little damage. On 
Friday, the 22nd, the savages seemed deter- 
mined to carry the fort. About eight hundred 
or more, under the leadership of Little Crow, 
came down from the agency, and concentrating 
themselves in the ravines which lay on several 
sides of the fort, they made a feint by sending 
about twenty warriors on the prairie for the 
purpose of drawing out the garrison from the 
fort and cutting them off. Such a movement, 
if successful, would have been fatal to the de- 
fenders, but fortunately there were men among 
I hem of much experience in Indian warfare 
who saw through the scheme and prevented the 
success of the maneuver. Then followed a 
shower of bullets on the fort from all direc- 
tions. The attack was continued for nearly 
five hours. It was bitterly fought, and coura- 
geously and intelligently resisted. Sergeant 
Jones and other artillerists handled the guns 
with effective skill, exploding shells in the out- 
lying buildings and burning them over the 
heads of the Indians, while the enemy endeav- 
ored to burn the wooden buildings composing 
the fort by shooting fire arrows on their roofs. 
( )ne of the most exposed and dangerous duties 
to be performed was covering the wooden roofs 
with earth to prevent fire. One white man was 
killed and seven wounded in this engagement. 
Lieutenant Sheehan, who commanded the post 
through all these trying occurrences; Lieuten- 
ant Gorman of the Renville Rangers; Lieu- 
tenant Whipple and Sergeants Jones and 
McGrew all did their duty in a manner becom- 
ing veterans, and the men seconded their ef- 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



69 



forts handsomely. The Indians, after this 
effort, being convinced that they could not take 
the fort, and anticipating the coming of rein 
forcements, withdrew, and concentrating all 
their available forces, descended upon New 
(Jim the next morning, August 23d, for a final 
struggle. In the official history of this battle, 
written for the State, I placed the force of the 
Indians as four hundred and fifty, but I have 
since learned from reliable sources that it 
was as above stated. 



BATTLE OF NEW ULM. 

We left New Ulm after the arrival of the 
various companies which I have named, on the 
twenty-first of August, strengthening its bar- 
ricades and awaiting events. I had placed a 
good glass on the top of one of the brick build 
ings within the barricades for the purpose of 
observation, and always kept a sentinel there 
to report any movement he should discover in 
any direction throughout the surrounding 
country. We had heard distinctly the cannon- 
ading at the fort for the past two days, but 
knew nothing of the result of the fight at that 
point. I was perfectly familiar, as were many 
of my command, with the country between 
New Ulm and the fort, on both sides of the 
river, knowing the house of every settler on 
the roads. 

Saturday, the 23d of August, opened bright 
and beautiful, and early in the morning we saw 
column after column of smoke rise in the direc- 
tion of the fort, each column being nearer than 
the last. We knew to a certainty that the 
Indians were approaching in force, burning 
every building and grain or hay stack as they 
passed. The settlers had either all been killed 
or had taken refuge at the fort or New Ulm, 
so we had no anxiety about them. About 9:30 
A. M. the enemy appeared in great force on 
both sides of the river. Those on the east side, 
when they reached the neighborhood of the 
ferry, burned some stacks as a signal of their 
arrival, which was responded to by a similar 
fire in the edge of the timber about two miles 
and a half from the town on the west side. 



Between this timber and the (own was a beau- 
tiful open prairie with considerable descent 
towards the town. Immediately on seeing the 
smoke from the ferry the enemy advanced 
rapidly, some six hundred strong, many 
mounted and the rest on foot. I had deter 
mined In meet them on the open prairie, and 
had formed my men by companies in a long line 
of battle, with intervals between them, on the 
first level plateau on the west side of the town, 
thus covering its whole west front. There were 
not over twenty or thirty rifles in the whole 
command, and a man with a shotgun, knowing 
his antagonist carries a rifle, has very little 
confidence in his fighting ability. l>own came 
the Indians in the bright sunlight, galloping, 
running, yelling and gesticulating in the most 
fiendish manner. If we had had good rifles 
they never would have go1 near enough to do 
much harm, but as it was, we could not check 
them before their Are began to tell on our line. 
They deployed to the right and left until they 
covered our entire front, and then charged. 
My men, appreciating the inferiority of their 
armament, after seeing several of their com- 
rades fall, and having fired a few ineffectual 
volleys, fell back on the town, passing some 
buildings without taking possession of them. 
This mistake was instantly taken advantage of 
by the Indians, who at once occupied them; 
but they did not follow us into the town 
proper, no doubt thinking our retreat was a 
feint to draw them among the buildings and 
thus gain an advantage. I think if they had 
boldly charged into the town and set it on tire 
they would have won the tight; but instead 
they surrounded it on all sides, the main body 
taking possession of the lower end of the main 
street below the barricades, from which direc- 
tion a strong wind was blowing towards the 
(inter of the town. From this point they be- 
gan firing the houses on both sides of the 
street. We soon rallied the men, and kept the 
enemy well in the outskirts of the town, and 
the fighting became general on all sides. Just 
about this time my first lieutenant, William B. 
Dodd, galloped down the main street, and as 
he passed a cross street the Indians put three 
or four bullets through him. He died during 



7o 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



the afternoon, after having been removed sev- 
eral times from house to house as the enemy 
crowded in upon us. 

On the second plateau there was an old Don 
(juixote windmill, with an immense tower and 
sail-arms about seventy-five feet long, which 
occupied a commanding position, and had been 
taken possession of by a company of about 
thirty men, who called themselves the Le 
Sueur Tigers, most of whom had rifles. They 
barricaded themselves with sacks of flour and 
wheat, loopholed the building and kept the sav- 
ages at a respectful distance from the west 
side of the town. A rifle ball will bury itself 
in a sack of flour or wheat, but will not pene- 
trate it. During the battle the men dug out 
several of them, and brought them to me be- 
cause they were the regulation Minie bullet, 
and there had been rumors that the Confeder- 
ates from Missouri had stirred up the revolt 
and supplied the Indians with guns and am- 
munition. I confess I was astonished when I 
saw the bullets, as I knew the Indians had no 
such arms, but 1 soon decided that they were 
using against us the guns and ammunition 
they had taken from the dead soldiers of Cap- 
tain Marsh's company. I do not believe the 
Confederates had any hand in the revolt of 
these Indians. 

We held several other outposts, being brick 
buildings outside the barricades, which we 
loopholed and found very effective in holding 
the Indians aloof. The battle raged generally 
all around the town, every man doing his best 
in his own way. It was a very interesting fight 
on account of the stake we were contending 
for. We had in the place about twelve or fif- 
teen hundred women and children, the lives of 
all of whom and of ourselves depeuded upon 
victory perching on our banners, for in a fight 
like this no quarter is ever asked or given. The 
desperation with which the conflict was con- 
ducted can be judged from the fact that I 
lost sixty men in the first hour and a half, ten 
killed and fifty wounded, out of less than two 
hundred and fifty, as my force had been de- 
pleted by the number of about seventy-five by 
Lieutenant Huey taking that number to guard 
the approach to the ferry. Crossing to the 



other side of the river he was cut off and 
forced to retreat toward St. Peter. It was 
simply a mistake of judgment to put the river 
between himself and the main force, but in his 
retreat he met Capt. E. St. Julien Cox with 
reinforcements for New Ulm, joined them and 
returned the next day. He was a brave and 
willing officer. The company I mentioned as 
having arrived from South Bend, having heard 
that the Winnebagoes had joined in the out- 
break, left us before the final attack on Satur- 
day, the 23d of August, claiming that then- 
presence at home was necessary to protect 
their families, and on the morning of the 
23d, when the enemy was in sight, a wagon 
load of others left us and went down the river. 
I doubt if we could have mustered over two 
hundred guns at any time during the fight. 

The enemy, seeing his advantage in firing 
the buildings in the lower part of the main 
street, and thus gradually nearing our barri- 
cades with the intention of burning us out, 
kept up his work as continuously as he could 
with the interruptions we made for him by 
occasionally driving him out, but his approach 
was (instant, and about two o'clock a roaring 
conflagration was raging on both sides of the 
street, and the prospect looked discouraging. 
At this juncture, Asa White, an old frontiers- 
man, connected with the Winnebagoes, whom 
I had known for a long time, and whose judg- 
ment and experience I appreciated and valued, 
came to me and said: "Judge, if this goes on, 
the Indians will bag us in about two hours." I 
said: "It looks that way; what remedy have 
you to suggest?" His answer was, "We must 
make for the cottonwood timber." Two miles 
and a half lay between us and the timber re- 
ferred to. which, of course, rendered his sug- 
gestion utterly impracticable with two thou- 
sand non-combatants to move, and I said: 
"White, they would slaughter us like sheep 
should we undertake such a movement ; our 
si longest hold is in this town, and if you will 
get together fifty volunteers I will drive the 
Indians out of the lower town and the greatest 
danger will be passed." He saw at once the 
propriety of my proposition and in a short time 
we had a squad ready, and sallied out, cheering 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



7> 



and yelling in a manner that would have done 
credit to the wildest < Jomanches. We knew the 
Indians were congregated in force down the 
street and expected to find them in a sunken 
road about three blocks from where we started, 
but they bad worked their way up much nearer 
to us and were in a deep swale about a block 
and a half from our barricades. There was a 
large number of them, estimated at about sev- 
enty-fire to one hundred, some on ponies and 
some on foot. When the conformation of the 
ground disclosed their whereabouts we were 
within one hundred feet of them. They opened 
a rapid fire on us, which we returned, while 
keeping up our rushing advance. When we 
were within fifty feet of them they turned and 
tied down the street. We followed (hem for at 
least half a mile, firing as well as we could. 
This took us beyond the burning houses, and 
finding a large collection of saw logs I called a 
halt and we took cover among them, lying flat 
on the ground. The Indians stopped when we 
ceased to advance, took cover behind anything 
that afforded protection, and kept up an inces- 
sant fire upon us whenever a head or hand 
showed itself above the logs. We held them, 
however, in this position, and prevented their 
return toward the town by way of the street. I 
at once sent a party back with instructions to 
burn every building, fence, stack or other ob- 
ject that would afford cover between us and 
the barricades. This order was strictly carried 
out, and by six or seven o'clock there was not 
a structure standing outside of the barricades 
in that part of the town. We then abandoned 
our saw logs and returned to the town, and the 
day was won. the Indians not daring to charge 
us overan open country. I lost four men lulled 
in this exploit, one of whom was especially to 
be regretted. I speak of Newell Houghton. In 
ordinary warfare all men stand for the same 
value as a general thing, but in an Indian fight 
a man of cool head, an exceptionally fine shot, 
and armed with a reliable rifle, is a loss doubly 
to be regretted. Houghton was famous as 
being the best shot and deer hunter in all the 
Northwest, and had with him his choice rifle. 
He had built a small steamboat with the pro- 
ceeds of his gun and we all held him in high 



respect as a fine type of frontiersman. We had 
hardly got back to the town before a man 
brought me a rifle which he had found on the 
ground near a clump of brush, and handing it 
to me said, "Some Indian lost a good gun in 
I hat run." II happened that White was with 
me and saw the gun. He recognized it in an 
instant, and said, "Newell Houghton is dead; 
he never let that gun out of his hands while he 
could hold it." We looked where the gun was 
picked up and found Houghton dead in the 
brush. He had been scalped by some Indian 
who had seen him fall and had sneaked back 
for that purpose. 

That night we dug a system of rifle pi Is all 
along the barricades on the outside, and 
manned them with three or four men each; bul 
the firing was desultory through the night and 
nothing much was accomplished on either side. 

The next morning, Sunday, opened bright 
and beautiful, but scarcely an Indian was to be 
seen. They had given up the contest and were 
rapidly retreating northward up the river. We 
got an occasional shot at one, but without 
effect except to hasten the retreat. And so 
ended the second and decisive battle of New 
Ulm. 

In this fight between ourselves and the en 
emy we burned one hundred and ninety build- 
ings, many of them substantial and valuable 
structures. The whites lost some fourteen 
killed and fifty or sixty wounded. The loss of 
the enemy is uncertain, but after the tight we 
found ten dead Indians in burned houses and 
in chaparral, where they escaped the notice of 
their friends. As to their wounded we knew 
nothing, but judging from the length and char- 
acter of the engagement and the number of 
I heir dead found, their casualties must have 
equaled, if not exceeded, ours. 

About noon of Sunday, the 24th, Capt. E. St. 
Julien Cox arrived with a company from St. 
Peter, which had been sent by Colonel Sibley 
to reinforce us. Lieutenant Huey, who had 
been cut off at the ferry on the previous day, 
accompanied him with a portion of his com- 
mand. They were welcome visitors. 

There were in the town at the time of the at- 
tack on the twentv third, as near as can be 



/- 



IIISTOKY OF MINNESOTA. 



learned, from 1,200 to 1,500 non-combatants, 
consisting of women and children, refugees 
and unarmed citizens, all of whose lives de- 
pended upon our success. It is dink-nit to con 
ceivo a much more exciting stake to play for, 
and the men seemed fully to appreciate it and 
made no mistakes. 

On the 25th we found that provisions and 
ammunition were becoming scarce, and pesti- 
lence being feared from stench and exposure, 
we decided to evacuate the town and try to 
reach Mankato. This destination was chosen 
to avoid the Minnesota river, the crossing of 
which we deemed impracticable. The only 
obstacle between us and Mankato was the Big 
Cottonwood river, which was fordable. We 
made up a train of one hundred and fifty-three 
wagons, which had largely composed our bar- 
ricades, loaded them with women and children, 
and about eighty wounded men, and started. 
A more heartrending procession was never wit- 
nessed in America. Here was the population 
of one of the most flourishing towns in the 
State abandoning their homes and property, 
starting on a journey of thirty odd miles 
through a hostile country, with a possibility of 
being massacred on the way, and no hope or 
prospect but the hospitality of strangers and 
ultimate beggary. The disposition of the guard 
was confided to Captain Cox. The march was 
successful, mi Indians being encountered. We 
reached Crisp's farm, which was about half 
way between New 1'lni and Mankato, about 
evening. I pushed the main column on, fear- 
ing danger from various sources, but camped 
at this point with about one hundred and fifty 
men, intending to return to New rim. or hold 
this point as a defensive measure for the ex- 
posed settlements further down the river. On 
the morning of the 20th we broke camp, and I 
endeavored to make the command return to 
New Ulm or remain where they were; my ob- 
ject, of course, being to keep an armed force 
between the enemy and the settlements. The 
men had not heard a word from their families 
for more than a week, and declined to return 
or remain. I did not blame them. They had 
demonstrated their willingness to tight when 
necessary, but held the protection of their fami- 



lies as paramount to mere military possibili- 
ties. I would not do justice to history did I not 
record that when I called for volunteers to re- 
turn Captain Cox and his whole squad stepped 
to the front ready to go where I commanded. 
Although I had not then heard of Capt.Marsh's 
disaster, I declined to allow so small a com- 
mand as that of Captain Cox to attempt the re- 
occupation of New Ulm. My staff stood by me 
in this effort, and a gentleman from Le Sueur 
county, Mr. Freeman Talbott, made an impres 
sive speech to the men to induce them to re- 
turn. The train arrived safely at Mankato on 
the 25111, and the balance of the command on 
the following day; whence the men generally 
sought their homes. 

I immediately, on arriving al Mankato. went 
to St. Peter to inform Colonel Sibley of the 
condition of things in the Indian country. I 
found him, in the night of August 26th, in camp 
about six miles out of St. Peter, and put him in 
possession of everything that had happened to 
the westward. His mounted men arrived at 
Fort Ridgely on the 27th of August, and were 
the first relief that reached that fort after its 
long siege. Sibley reached the fort on the 28th 
of August. Intrenchments were thrown up 
about the fort, cannon properly placed and a 
strong guard maintained. All but ninety men 
of the Cullen Guard, under Captain Anderson, 
returned home as soon as they found the fort 
was safe. The garrison was soon increased by 
the arrival of forty-seven men under Captain 
Sterritt, and on the 1st of September Lieut. 
Col. William Marshall of the Seventh Regi- 
ment arrived with a portion of his command. 
This force could not make a forward movement 
on account of a lack of ammunition and provis- 
ions, which were long delayed. 



BATTLE OF BIRCH COTJLIE. 

On the :'>lst of August a detail of Captain 
Grant's company of infantry, seventy men of 
tlie Cullen Guard under Captain Anderson, 
and siime citizens and other soldiers, in all 
about one hundred and fifty men, under com- 
mand of Maj. Joseph R. Brown, with seventeen 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



73 



teams and teamsters, were sent from Fort 
Ridgely to the lower agency to feel the enemy, 
bury the dead and perform any other service 
that might arise. They went as far as Little 
Crow's village, but not finding any signs of 
Indians they returned, and on the 1st of Sep- 
tember they reached Birch Coulie and en- 
camped at the head of it. Birch Coulie is a 
ravine extending from the upper plateau to the 
river bottom, nearly opposite the ferry where 
Captain Marsh's company was ambushed. 

The Indians, after their defeat at Fort 
Ridgely and New Ulm, had concentrated at the 
Yellow Medicine river, and decided to make one 
more desperate effort to carry their point of 
driving the whites out of the country. Their 
plan of operation was to come down the Minne- 
sota Valley in force, stealthily, passing Sib- 
ley's command at Ridgely, and attacking St. 
Peter and Mankato simultaneously. They con- 
gregated all their forces for this attempt and 
started down the river, \Yhen they reached 
the foot of Birch Coulie they saw the last of 
Major Brown's command going up the Coulie. 
They decided to wait and see where they en- 
camped and attack them early in the morning. 
The whites went to the upper end of the Coulie 
and camped on the open prairie about two hun- 
dred and fifty feet from the brush in the Coulie. 
On the other side of their camp there was a roll 
in i lie prairie about four or five feet.high, which 
they probably did not notice. This gave the 
enemy cover on both sides of the camp, which 
they did not fail to see and take advantage of. 
The moment daylight came sufficiently to dis- 
close the camp the Indians opened fire from 
both sides. The whites had ninety horses 
hitched to a picket rope and their wagons 
formed in a circular corral, with their camp in 
the center. The Indians soon killed all the 
horses but one, and the men used their car- 
casses as breastworks from which to fight be- 
hind. The battle raged from the morning of 
September 2, to September 3, when they were 
relieved by Colonel Sibley's whole command 
and the Indians fled to the west. 

Maj. Joseph R. Brown was one of the most 
experienced Indian men in the country and 
would never have made the mistake of locating 



his camp in a place that gave the enemy such 
an advantage. He did not arrive until the 
camp was selected and should have removed it 
at once. I have always supposed that he was 
lulled into a sense of security by not having 
seen any signs of Indians in his march; but the 
result proved that when in a hostile Indian 
country no one is ever justified in omitting any 
precautions. The firing at Birch Coulie was 
heard at Fort Ridgely, and a relief was sent 
under Colonel McPhail, which was checked by 
the Indians a few miles before it reached its 
destination. The Colonel sent a courier to the 
tint for reinforcements, and it fell to Lieuten- 
ant Sheehan to carry the message. With his 
usual energy he succeeded in getting through, 
his horse dying under him on his arrival. Col- 
onel Sibley at once started with his whole com- 
mand, and when he reached the battle ground 
the Indians left the field. 

This was one of the most disastrous battles 
of the war. Twenty-three were killed outright, 
or mortally wounded, and forty-five severely 
wounded, while many others received slight in- 
juries. The tents were, by the shower of bul- 
lets, made to resemble lace work, so completely 
were they perforated. One hundred and four 
bullet holes were counted in one tent. Besides 
the continual shower of bullets that was kept 
up by the Iudians, the men suffered terribly 
from thirst, as it was impossible to get water 
into the camp. This fight forms a very import- 
ant feature in the Indian war, as, notwithstand- 
ing its horrors, it probably prevented awful 
massacres at St. Peter and Mankato, the for- 
mer being absolutely defenseless and the latter 
only protected by a small squad of about eighty 
men, which formed my headquarters guard at 
South Bend, about four miles distant. 



OCCURRENCES IN MEEKER COUNTY 
AND VICINITY. 

While these events were passing, other por- 
tions of the State were being prepared for de 
fense. In the region of Forest City in Meeker 
county, and also at Hutchinson and Glencoe, 
the excitement was intense. Capt. George C. 



74 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



Wliitcomb obtained in St. Paul seventy-five 
stand of arms and some ammunition. He left a 
part of the arms at Hutchinson, and with the 
rest armed a company at Forest City of fifty- 
three men, twenty-five of whom were mounted. 
Capt. Richard Strout of Company B, Ninth 
Regiment, was ordered to Forest City, and went 
there with his company. Col. John H. Stevens 
of Glencoe was commander of the State militia 
for the counties of McLeod, Carver, Sibley and 
Renville. As soon as he learned of the out- 
break he erected a very substantial fortifica- 
tion of saw-logs at Glencoe, and that place was 
not disturbed by the savages. A company of 
volunteers was formed at Glencoe under Capt. 
A. H. Rouse. Company F of the Ninth Regi- 
ment, under Lieut. O. P. Stearns, and Company 
H of the same regiment (Capt. W. R. Baxter i. 
also an independent company from Excelsior, 
and the Goodhue County Rangers (Capt. David 
L. Davis), all did duty at and about Glencoe 
during the continuance of the trouble. Cap- 
tains Whitcomb and Strout, with their com- 
panies, made extensive reconnoissances into the 
surrounding counties, rescuing many refugees, 
and having several brisk and sharp encounters 
with the Indians, in which they lost several 
killed and wounded. The presence of these 
troops in this region of country, and their 
active operations, prevented its depopulation 
and saved the towns and much valuable prop- 
erty from destruction. 



PROTECTION OF THE SOUTHERN FRON- 
TIER. 

On the 29th of August I received a commis- 
sion from the Governor of the State instruct- 
ing and directing me to take command of the 
Blue Earth country, extending from New 7 Ulm 
to the north line of Iowa, embracing the then 
western and southwestern frontier of the 
State. My powers were general, to raise 
troops, commission officers, subsist upon the 
country, and generally to do what in my judg- 
ment was best for the protection el' this fron- 
tier. Under these powers I located my head- 



quarters at South Bend, being the extreme 
southern point of the Minnesota river, thirty 
miles below New Ulm, four from Mankato and 
about fifty from the Iowa line. Here I main- 
tained a guard of about eighty men. We 
threw up some small intrenchments, but noth- 
ing worthy of mention. Enough citizens of 
New I'lm had returned home to form two com- 
panies at that point; Company E of the 
Ninth Regiment, under Capt. Jerome E. Dane, 
was stationed at Crisp's farm, about half way 
between New Ulm and South Bend; Col. John 
R. Jones of Chatfield collected about three hun- 
dred men, and reported to me at Garden City. 
They were organized into companies under 
Captains N. P. Colburn and Post, and many 
of them stationed at Garden City, where they 
erected a serviceable fort of saw-logs. Others 
of this command were stationed at points along 
the Blue Earth river. Capt. Cornelius F. Buck 
of Winona raised a company of fifty-three men, 
all mounted, and started west. They reached 
Winnebago City, in the county of Faribault, 
on the 7th of September, where they reported 
to me, and were stationed at Chain lakes, 
about twenty miles west of Winnebago City; 
twenty of this company were afterwards sent 
to Madelia. A stockade was erected by this 
company at Martin lake. In the latter part 
of August Capt. A. J. Edgerton, of Company 
B, Tenth Regiment, arrived at South Bend, 
and having made his report, was stationed at 
I lie Winnebago agency, to keep watch on those 
Indians and cover Mankato from that direc- 
tion. About the same time Company F of 
the Eighth Regiment, under Capt. L. Aldrich, 
reported and was stationed at New Ulm. E. 
St. Julien Cox, who had previously reinforced 
me at New Ulm, was commissioned a captain 
and put in command of a force which was sta- 
tioned at Madelia, in Watowan county, where 
I hey erected quite an artistic fortification of 
logs, with bastions. While there an attack was 
made upon some citizens who had ventured 
beyond the safe limits, and several whites were 
killed. 

It will be seen by the above statement that 
almost immediately after the evacuation of 
New Ulm, on the 25th of August, the most ex 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



75 



posed part of the southern frontier was occu- 
pied by quite a strong force. I did not expect 
that any serious incursions would be made 
along this line, but the state of alarm and 
panic that prevailed among the people ren- 
dered it necessary to establish this cordon of 
military posts to prevent an exodus of the in- 
habitants. No one who has not gone through 
the ordeal of an Indian insurrection can form 
any idea of the terrible apprehension that 
takes possession of a defenseless aud non-com- 
batant population under such circumstances. 
There is an element of mystery and uncertainty 
about the magnitude and movements of tins 
enemy, and a certainty of his brutality, that 
inspires mortal terror. The first notice of his 
approach is the crack of his rifle, and no one 
with experience in such struggles ever blames 
the timidity of citizens in exposed positions 
when assailed by these savages. I think, all 
things being considered, the people generally 
behaved very well. If a map of the State is 
consulted, taking New Ulm as the most north- 
ern point on the Minnesota river, it will be 
seen that the line of my posts covered the fron- 
tier from that point down the river to South 
Bend, and up the Blue Earth southerly, to Win- 
nebago City, and thence to the Iowa line. 
These stations were about sixteen miles apart, 
with two advanced posts at Madelia and Chain 
lakes, to the westward. A system of couriers 
was established, starting from each end of the 
cordon every morning with dispatches from 
tlie commanding officer to headquarters, who 
stopped at every station for an endorsement 
of what was going on, so I knew every day 
what had happened a I every point on my line. 
By this means the frontier population was 
pacified, and no general exodus took place. 

In September Major General Pope was or- 
dered to Minnesota to conduct the Indian war. 
He made liis headquarters at St. Paul, and by 
his high rank took command of all operations, 
though not exerting any visible influence on 
them, the fact being that all imminent danger 
had been overcome by the State and its citi- 
zens before his arrival. In the latter part of 
September the citizen troops under my com- 
mand were anxious to return to their homes, 



and on presentation of the situation to General 
Pope, lie ordered into the State a new regiment 
just mustered into the service in Washington 
— the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin — commanded by 
Col. M. Montgomery, who was ordered to re- 
lieve me. lie appeared at South Bend on the 
lsi of October, and alter having fully informed 
liiin of what had transpired and given him my 
views as to the future, I tinned my command 
over to hi in in the following order: I give it, as 
it succinctly presents the situation of affairs at 
the time. 

"Headquarters Indian Expedition, 

Southern Frontier. 
South Bend, October 5, 1862. 
To the Soldiers and Citizens who have been, 
and are now. engaged in the defense of 
the Southern Frontier: 

On the eighteenth day of August last your 
frontier was invaded by the Indians. You 
promptly rallied for its defense. You checked 
the advance of the enemy and defeated 
him in two severe battles at New Ulm. You 
have held a line of frontier posts extending 
over a distance of one hundred miles. You 
have erected six substantial fortifications and 
other defensive works of less magnitude. You 
have dispersed marauding bands of savages 
that have hung upon your lines. You have 
been uniformly brave, vigilant and obedient 
to orders. By your efforts the war has been 
confined to the border; without them, it would 
have penetrated into the heart of the State. 

Major General Pope has assumed command 
of the Northwest, and will control future op- 
erations. He promises a vigorous prosecution 
of the war. Five companies of the Twenty- 
fifth Wisconsin Regiment and five hundred 
cavalry from Iowa are ordered into the region 
now held by you, and will supply the places 
of those whose terms of enlistment shortly ex- 
pire. The department of the southern frontier, 
which I have had the honor to command, will, 
from the date of this order, be under the com- 
mand of Colonel M. Montgomery of the Twen- 
ty-fifth Wisconsin, whom I take pleasure in 
introducing to the troops and citizens of that 
department, as a soldier and a man to whom 
they may confide their interests and the safety 
of their country, with every assurance that 
they will be protected and defended. 

Pressing public duties of a civil nature de- 
mand my absence temporarily from the border. 
The intimate and agreeable relations we have 
sustained toward each other, our union in dan- 



7 6 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



ger and adventure, cause me regret in leaving 
you, but will hasten my return. 

Charles E. Flandrau, 
Colonel Commanding, 
Southern Frontier." 

This practically terminated my connection 
with the Mar. All matters yet to be related 
took place in other parts of the State, under 
the command of Colonel Sibley and others. 



COLONEL SIBLEY MOVES UPON THE 
ENEMY. 

We left Colonel Sibley on the 4th of Sep- 
tember at Fort Ridgely, having just relieved 
the unfortunate command of Maj. Joseph R. 
Brown, after the fight at Birch Coulie. Know- 
ing that the Indians had in their possession 
many white captives, and having their rescue 
alive uppermost in his mind, the Colonel left 
on the battlefield at Birch Coulie the following 
communication attached to a stake driven in 
the ground, feeling assured that it would fall 
into the hands of Little Crow, the leader of the 
Indians: 

"If Little Crow has any proposition to make, 
let him send a half-breed to me, and he shall 
be protected in and out of camp. 

H. H. Sibley, 
Colonel Commanding, 
Military Expedition." 

The note was found and answered by Little 
Crow in a manner rather irrelevant to the sub- 
ject most desired by Colonel Sibley. It was 
dated at Yellow Medicine, September 7, and 
delivered by two half-breeds. 

Colonel Sibley returned the following an- 
swer by the bearers: 

"Little Crow, you have murdered many of 
our people without any sufficient cause. Re- 
turn me the prisoners under a flag of truce and 
I will talk with you like a man." 

No response was received to this letter until 
September 12, when Little Crow sent an- 
other, saying that he had one hundred and 
fifty-five prisoners, not including those held by 
the Sissetons and Wakpaytons, who were at 
Lac qui Parle, and were coming down. He 



also gave assurances that the prisoners were 
faring well. Colonel Sibley, on the 12th of 
September, sent a reply by Little Crow's mes- 
sengers, saying that no peace could be made 
without a surrender of the prisoners, but not 
promising peace on any terms, and charging 
the commission of nine murders since the re- 
ceipt of Little Crow's last letter. The same 
messenger that brought this letter from Little 
Crow also delivered quite a long one from 
Wabasha \v and Taopee, two lower chiefs who 
claimed to be friendly, and desired a meeting 
with Colonel Sibley, suggesting two places 
where it could be held. The Colonel replied 
that he would march in three days, and was 
powerful enough to crush all the Indians; that 
they might approach his column in open day 
with a flag of truce, and place themselves un- 
der his protection. On the receipt of this note 
a large council was held, at which nearly all 
the annuity Indians were present. Several 
speeches were made by the Upper and Lower 
Sioux, some in favor of continuance of the war, 
and "dying in the last ditch," and some in favor 
of surrendering the prisoners. I quote from 
a speech made by Paul Ma-za-ku-ta-ma-ni, who 
will be remembered as one of the Indians who 
volunteered to rescue the white captives from 
Ink-pa -du-ta's band in 1857, and who was al- 
ways true to the whites. He said among other 
things: 

"In fighting the whites you are fighting the 
thunder and lightning. You say you can make 
a treaty with the British government. That is 
not possible. Have you not yet come to your 
senses? They are also white men, and neigh- 
bors and friends to the soldiers. They are 
ruled by a petticoat, and she has the tender 
heart of a squaw. What will she do for the 
men who have committed the murders you 
have?" 

This correspondence was kept up for several 
days, quite a number of letters coming from 
the Indians to Colonel Sibley, but with no sat 
isfactory results. On the 18th of September 
Colonel Sibley determined to move upon the 
enemy, and on that day camp was broken at 
the fort, a boat constructed and a crossing of 
the Minnesota river effected near the fort to 
prevent the possibility of an ambuscade. Col- 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



77 



ouel Sibley's force consisted of the Sixth Regi- 
ment, under Colonel Crooks; about three 
hundred men of the Third, under Major Welch; 
several companies of the Seventh under Col. 
William R. Marshall; a small number of 
mounted men under Colonel McPhail, and a 
battery under the command of Capt. Mark 
Hendricks. The expedition moved up the river 
without encountering any opposition until the 
morning of the 23d of September. Indians had 
been in sight during all the march, carefully 
watching the movements of the troops, and 
several messages of defiance were found at- 
tached to fences and houses. 



THE BATTLE OF WOOD LAKE. 

On the evening of the 22nd the expedition 
camped at Lone Tree lake, about two miles 
from the Yellow Medicine river, and about 
three miles east from Wood lake. Early next 
morning several foraging teams belonging to 
the Third Regiment were fired upon. They 
returned the fire and retreated toward the 
camp. At this juncture the Third Regiment, 
without orders, sallied out, crossed a deep ra- 
vine and soon engaged the enemy. They were 
ordered back by the commander and had not 
reached camp before Indians appeared on all 
sides in great numbers, many of them in the 
ravine between the Third Regiment and the 
camp. Thus began the battle of Wood lake. 
Captain Hendricks opened with his cannon 
and the howitzer under the direct command 
of Colonel Sibley, and poured in shot and shell. 
It has since been learned that Little Crow had 
appointed ten of his best men to kill Colonel 
Sibley at all hazards, and that the shells di- 
rected by the Colonel's own hand fell into this 
special squad and dispersed them. Captain 
Hendricks pushed his cannon to the head of 
the ravine and raked it with great eifect, and 
Colonel Marshall, with three companies of the 
Seventh, and Captain Grant's company of the 
Sixth, charged down the ravine on a double 
quick and routed the Indians. About eight 
hundred of the command were engaged in the 
conflict, and met about an equal number of 



Indians. Our loss was four killed and between 
forty and fifty wounded. Major Welch of the 
Third was shot in the leg, but not fatally. The 
Third and the Renville Rangers, under Capt. 
James Gorman, bore the brunt of the fight, 
which lasted about an hour and a half, and 
sustained the most of the losses. Colonel Sib- 
ley, in his official report of the encounter, gives 
great credit to his staff and all of his com- 
mand. An-pay-tu-tok-a-cha, or John Otherday, 
was with the whites, and took a conspicuous 
part in the fray. 

Thus ended the battle of Wood lake. It 
was an important factor in the war, as it was 
about the first time the Indians engaged large 
forces of well organized troops in the open 
country, and their utter discomfiture put them 
on the run. It will be noticed that I have not 
in any of my narratives of battles used the 
stereotyped expression: "Our losses were so 
many, but the losses of the enemy were much 
greater; however, as they always carry off 
their dead and wounded, it is impossible to 
give exact figures." The reason I have not 
made use of this common expression is, be- 
cause I don't believe it. The philosophy of 
Indian warfare is, to kill your enemy and not 
get killed yourself, and they can take cover 
more skilfully than any other people. In all 
our Iudiau wars from the Atlantic westward, 
with regulars or militia, I believe it would not 
be an exaggeration to say that the whites have 
lost ten to one of the Indians in killed and 
wounded. But the battle of Wood lake was 
quite an open fight, and so rapidly conducted 
and concluded that we have a very accurate 
account of the loss of the enemy. He had no 
time or opportunity to withdraw his dead. Fif- 
teen dead were found upon the field, and one 
wounded prisoner was taken. No doubt many 
others were wounded who were able to escape. 
After this fight Colonel Sibley retired to the 
vicinity of an Indian camp located nearly op- 
posite the mouth of the Chippewa river, where 
it empties into the Minnesota, and there en- 
camped. This point was afterwards called 
"Camp Release," from the fact that the white 
prisoners held by the enemy were here deliv- 
ered to Colonel Sibley's command. We will 



78 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



leave Colonel Sibley and his troops at Camp 
Release and narrate the important events that 
occurred on the Red River of the North, at 
and about Fort Abercrombie. 



FORT ABERCROMBIE. 

The United States government, about the 
year 1858, erected a military post on the west 
side of the Red River of the North at a place 
then known as Graham's Point, between what 
are now known as the cities of Breckenridge 
and Fargo. Like most of the frontier posts of 
that day, it was not constructed with reference 
to defense, but more as a depot for troops and 
military stores. It was then in the midst of 
the Indian country, and is now in Richland 
county, North Dakota. The troops that had 
garrisoned the fort had been sent South to aid 
in suppressing the Southern Rebellion, and 
their places had been supplied by one company 
of the Fifth Regiment of Minnesota Volun- 
teers, which was commanded by Capt. John 
Van der Horck. There was a place down the 
river, and north of the fort about fifty miles, 
called Georgetown, at which there were some 
settlers, and a depot of stores for the company 
engaged in the navigation of the river. At the 
commencement of the outbreak Captain Van 
der Horck had detached about one-half of his 
company and sent them to Georgetown to pro- 
tect the interests centered at that point. 

About the 20th of August news reached 
Abercrombie from the Yellow Medicine agency 
that trouble was expected from the Indians. 
An expedition was on the way to Red lake to 
make a treaty with the Chippewa Indians, 
which consisted of the government commis- 
sioners and party, accompanied by a train of 
thirty loaded wagons and a herd of two hun- 
dred cattle. On the 23d of August news 
reached Fort Abercrombie that a large body 
of Indians were on the way to capture this 
party. A courier was at once dispatched to 
the train, and it immediately sought refuge in 
the fort. Runners were also sent to all the set- 
tlements in the vicinity, and the warning 
spread of the approaching danger. Happily, 



nearly all of the surrounding people reached 
the fort before the arrival of the enemy. The 
detachment stationed at Georgetown was also 
called in. A mail coach that left the fort on 
the 22nd fell into the hands of the Indians, who 
killed the driver and destroyed the mail. 

The garrison had been strengthened by 
about fifty men capable of duty from the refu- 
gees, but they were unarmed. Captain Van 
der Horck strengthened his post by all means 
in his power, and endeavored to obtain rein- 
forcements. Captain Freeman, with about 
sixty men, started from St. Cloud on the Mis- 
sissippi to relieve the garrison at Abercrombie, 
but on reaching Sauk Center the situation ap- 
peared so alarming that it was deemed impru- 
dent to proceed with so small a force, and no 
addition could be made to it at Sauk Center. 
Attempts were made to reinforce the fort from 
other points. Two companies were sent from 
Fort Snelling, and got as far as Sauk Center, 
but the force was even then deemed inadequate 
to proceed to Abercrombie. Part of the Third 
Regiment was also dispatched from Snelling 
to its relief on September 6. Another expe- 
dition, consisting of companies under com- 
mand of Captains George Atkinson and Rollo 
Banks, with a small squad of about sixty men 
of the Third Regiment under command of Ser- 
geant Dearborn, together with a field-piece 
under Lieut. Robert -T. McHenry, was formed, 
and placed under the command of Capt. Emil 
A. Burger. This command started on Septem- 
ber 10, and, after a long and arduous march, 
reached the fort on the 23d of September, find- 
ing the wearied and anxious garrison still in 
possession. Captain Burger had been l'ein- 
forced at Wyman's station, on the Alexandria 
road, on the 19th of September by the com- 
panies under Captains Freeman and Barrett, 
who had united their men on the 14th, and 
started for the fort. The relief force amounted 
to quite four hundred men by the time it 
reached its destination. 

While this long delayed force was on its way 
the little garrison at the fort had its hands full 
to maintain its position. On the 30th of Au- 
gust a large body of Indians made a bold raid 
on the post and succeeded in stampeding anil 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



79 



running off nearly two hundred head of cattle 
and one hundred head of horses and mules, 
which were grazing on the prairie. Some fifty 
of the cattle afterwards escaped and were 
restored to the post by a scouting party. This 
band of marauders did not, however, attack 
the fort. No one who has not experienced it 
can appreciate the mortification of seeing an 
enemy despoil you of your property when you 
are powerless to resist. An attack was made 
on the fort on the 3d of September, and some 
stacks burned and a few horses captured. Sev- 
eral men were killed on both sides, and Cap- 
tain Van der Horck was wounded in the right 
arm from an accidental shot from one of his 
own men. On September 6th a second attack 
was made by a large force of Indians, which 
lasted nearly all day, in which we lost two men 
and had several wounded. No further attack 
was made until the 26th of September, when 
Captain Freeman's company was fired on while 
watering their horses in the river. These In- 
dians were routed and pursued by Captain 
Freeman's company and a squad of the Third 
Regiment men with a howitzer. Their camp 
was captured, which contained quite an 
amount of plunder. A light skirmish took 
place on the 29th of September, in which the 
enemy was routed, and this affair ended the 
siege of Fort Abercrombie. 



CAMP RELEASE. 



Colonel Sibley's command made Camp Re- 
lease on the 26th of September. This camp was 
in the near vicinity of a large Indian camp of 
about one hundred and fifty lodges. These In- 
dians were composed of Upper and Lower 
Sioux, and had generally been engaged in all 
the massacres that had taken place since the 
outbreak. They had with them some two hun- 
dred and fifty prisoners, composed of women 
and children, whites and half-breeds. Only one 
white man was found in the camp — George 
Spencer — who had been desperately wounded 
at the lower agency, and saved from death 
by an Indian friend of his. 

The desire of the troops to attack and pun- 



ish these savages was intense, but Colonel 
Sibley kept steadily in mind that the rescue of 
the prisoners was his first duty, and he well 
knew that any demonstration of violence 
would immediately result in the destruction of 
the captives. He therefore wisely overruled 
all hostile inclinations. The result was a gen- 
eral surrender of the whole camp, together 
with all the prisoners. As soon as the safety 
of the captives was assured inquiry was insti- 
tuted as to the participation of these Indians 
in the massacres and outrages which had been 
so recently perpetrated. Many cases were soon 
developed of particular Indians who had been 
guilty of the grossest atrocities, and the com- 
mander decided to form a military tribunal to 
try the offenders. 



TRIAL OF THE INDIANS. 

The State has reason to congratulate itself 
on tw r o things in this connection. First, that 
it had so wise and just a man as Colonel Sibley 
to select this important tribunal, and, second, 
that he had at his command such admirable 
material from which to make his selection. It 
must be remembered that this court entered 
upon its duties with the lives of hundreds of 
men at its absolute disposal. Whether they 
were Indians or any other kind of people, the 
fact must not be overlooked that they were 
human beings, and the responsibility of the 
tribunal was correspondingly great. Colonel 
Sibley, at this date, sent me a dispatch, declar- 
ing his intention in the matter of the result of 
the trials. It is as follows: 

"Camp Release, nine miles below 

Lac Qui Parle, Sept. 25, 1862. 

Colonel: (After speaking of a variety of 
matters concerning the disposition of troops 
who were in my command, the battle of Wood 
lake — which he characterized as 'A smart con- 
flict we had with the Indians' — the rescue of 
the prisoners and other matters, he adds): 

N. B. I am encamped near a camp of one 
hundred and fifty lodges of friendly Indians 
and half-breeds, but have had to purge it of 
suspected characters. I have apprehended 
sixteen supposed to have been connected with 
the late outrages, and have appointed a mili- 



8o 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



tary commission of five officers to try them. 
If found guilty they will be forthwith executed, 
although it will perhaps be a stretch of my au- 
thority. If so, necessity must be my justifica- 
tion. Yours, 

H. H. Sibley." 

On the 2Sth of September an order was is- 
sued convening this court martial. It was 
composed of William Crooks, colonel of the 
Sixth Regiment, president; William R. 
Marshall, lieutenant colonel of the Sev- 
enth Regiment; Captains Grant and Baily 
of the Sixth, and Lieutenant Olin of the 
Third. Others were subsequently added as 
necessity required. All these men were of 
mature years, prominent in their social and 
general standing as citizens, and as well 
equipped as any persons could be to engage 
in such work. What I regard as the most im- 
portant feature in the composition of this most 
extraordinary court is the fact that the Hon. 
Isaac V. D. Heard, an experienced lawyer of 
St. Paul, who had been for many years the 
prosecuting attorney of Ramsey county, and 
who was thoroughly versed in criminal law, 
was on the staff of Colonel Sibley, and was 
by him appointed recorder of the court. Mr. 
Heard, in the performance of his duty, was 
above prejudice or passion, and could treat a 
case of this nature as if it was a mere misde- 
meanor. Lieutenant Olin was Judge Advocate 
of the court, but as the trials progressed the 
evidence was all put in and the records kept 
by Mr. Heard. Some changes were made in 
the personnel of the court from time to 
time, as the officers were needed else- 
where, but none of the changes lessened 
the dignity or character of the tribunal. I 
make these comments because the trials took 
place at a period of intense excitement, and 
persons unacquainted with the facts may be 
led to believe that the court was "organized to 
convict," and was unfair in its decisions. 

The court sat some time at Camp Release, 
then at the lower agency and Mankato, where 
it investigated the question whether the Win- 
nebagoes had participated in the outbreak, but 
none of that tribe were implicated, which 
proves that the court acted judicially, and not 



upon unreliable evidence, as the country was 
full of rumors and charges that the Winneba- 
goes were implicated. The court terminated 
its sittings at Fort Snelling, after a series of 
sessions lasting from September 30 to No- 
vember 5, 1862, during which four hundred 
and twenty-five prisoners were arraigned and 
i lied. Of these three hundred and twenty-one 
were found guilty of the offenses charged, of 
whom three.hundred and three were sentenced 
to death and the rest to various terms of im- 
prisonment according to the nature of their 
crimes. The condemned prisoners were re- 
moved to Mankato, where they were confined 
in a large guard house constructed of logs for 
the purpose, and were guarded by a strong 
force of soldiers. On the way down, as the 
party having charge of the prisoners passed 
through New Ulm, they found the inhabitants 
disinterring the dead, who had been hastily 
buried in the streets where they fell during the 
fights at that place. The sight of the Indians 
so enraged the people that a general attack 
was made on the wagons in which they were 
ehained together. The attacking force was 
principally composed of women, armed with 
clubs, stones, knives, hot water and similar 
weapons. Of course, the guard could not shoot 
or bayonet a woman, and they got the prison- 
ers through the town with the loss of one 
killed and many battered and bruised. 

While this court-martial was in session the 
news of its proceedings reached the eastern 
cities, and a great outcry was raised that Min- 
nesota was contemplating a dreadful massacre 
of Indians. Many influential bodies of well- 
intentioned but ill informed people beseeched 
President Lincoln to put a stop to the proposed 
executions. The President sent for the records 
of the trials, and turned them over to his legal 
and military advisers to decide which w 7 ere the 
more flagrant cases. On the 6th of December, 
1862, the President made the following order: 

"Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C, 

December 6, 1862. 
Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley, 

St. Paul, Minnesota: 
Ordered, that of the Indians and half-breeds 
sentenced to be hanged by the Military Com- 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



8 1 



mission, composed of Colonel Crooks, Lieuten- 
ant Colonel Marshall, Captain Grant, Captain 
Bailey and Lieutenant Olin, and lately sitting 
in Minnesota, you cause to be executed on Fri- 
day, the 19th day of December, instant, the 
following named, to-wit: 

(Here follows the names of thirty-nine In- 
dians and their numbers on the record of con- 
viction.) 

The other condemned prisoners you will 
hold subject to further orders, faking care that 
they neither escape nor are subjected to any 
unlawful violence. Abraham Lincoln, 

President of the United States." 

Colonel Sibley had been appointed by Presi- 
dent Lincoln a Brigadier General on the 29th 
of September, 1802, on account of his success 
at the battle of Wood Lake, the announcement 
of his promotion being in a telegram, as fol- 
lows: 

"Washington, D. C, Sept. 29, 1862. 
Major General Pope, 

St. Paul, Minnesota: 
Colonel Henry H. Sibley is made a Brigadier 
General for his judicious fight at Yellow Medi- 
cine. He should be kept in command of that 
column and every possible assistance sent to 
him. H. W. Halleck, 

General in Chief." 

His commission as brigadier general was not 
issued until March 20, 1804, but, of course, this 
telegram amounted to an appointment to the 
position, and if accepted, as it was, made him 
subject to the orders of the President; so not- 
withstanding his dispatch to me stating that 
the Indians, if convicted, would be forthwith 
executed, he could not very well carry out such 
an extreme duty without first submitting it to 
the Federal authorities, of which he had be- 
come a part. 

My view of the question has always been 
that when the court-martial was organized 
Colonel Sibley had no idea that more than 
twenty or twenty-five of the Indians would be 
convicted, which is partly inferable from his 
dispatch to me, in which he said he had "ap- 
prehended sixteen supposed to have been con- 
nected with the late outrages." But when the 
matter assumed the proportions it did, and 
he found on his hands some three hundred men 
to kill, he was glad to shift the responsibility 



to higher authority. Any humane man would 
have been of the same mind. I have my own 
views also of the reasons of the general gov- 
ernment in eliminating from the list of the con- 
demned all but thirty-nine. It was not because 
these thirty-nine were more guilty than the 
rest, hut because we were engaged in a great 
< 'ivil War, and the eyes of the world were upon 
us. Had these three hundred men been exe- 
cuted, the charge would have undoubtedly 
been made by the South that the North was 
murdering prisoners of war, and the authori- 
ties at Washington, knowing full well that the 
other nations were not capable of making the 
proper discrimination, and perhaps not anx- 
ious to do so if they were, deemed it safer not 
to incur the odium which might follow from 
such an accusation. 



EXECUTION OF THE THIRTY-EIGHT 
CONDEMNED INDIANS. 

The result of the matter was that the order 
of the President was obeyed, and on the 20th 
of December, 1802, thirty-eight of the con- 
demned Indians were executed by hanging at 
Mankato, one having been pardoned by the 
President. Contemporaneous 'history, or rather 
general public knowledge of what actually oc- 
curred, says that the pardoned Indian was 
hanged and one of the others liberated by mis- 
take. As an historian, I do not assert this to 
be true, but as a citizen, thoroughly well in- 
formed of current events at the time of this 
execution, I believe it to be a fact. The hang- 
ing of the thirty-eight was done on one gallows, 
constructed in a square form capable of sus- 
taining ten men on each side. They were 
placed upon a platform facing inwards, and 
dropped all at once by the cutting of a rope. 
The execution was successful in all its details, 
and reflects credit on the ingenuity and engi- 
neering skill of Captain Burt of Stillwater, 
who was intrusted with the construction of 
the deadly machine. The rest of the condemned 
Indians were, after some time, taken down to 
Davenport, in Iowa, and held in confinement 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



until the excitemenl had generally subsided, 
when they were sent wesi of the .Missouri and 
set free. An Indian never forgets what he re- 
gards as an injury, and never forgives an en- 
emy. It is my opinion that all the troubles 
that have taken place since the liberation of 
these Indians, with the tribes inhabiting the 
western plains and mountains up to a recent 
date, have grown out of the evil counsels of 
these savages. The only proper course to have 
pursued with them, when it was decided not 
to hang them, was to have exiled them to some 
remote post — say the Dry Tortugas — where 
communication with their people would bare 
been impossible, set them to work on fortifica- 
tions or other public works, and allowed them 
to pass out by life limitation. 

The execution of these Indians practically 
terminated the campaign for the year 1862, no 
other event worthy of detailed record having 
occurred; but the Indian war was far from 
being over, as it was deemed prudent to keep 
within the State a sufficient force of troops to 
successfully resist all further al tacks and to 
inaugurate an aggressive campaign in the com- 
ing year. The whole of I he Sixth, Seventh and 
Tenth Regiments, the Mounted Rangers, some 
artillery organizations, scouts and other troops 
were wintered in the State at various points 
along the more exposed frontier; in 1863 a 
formidable expedition under command of Gen- 
eral Sibley was sent from Minnesota to crush 
the enemy, which was to be aided and co-op- 
erated with by another expedition under Gen. 
Alfred Sully, of equal proportions, which was 
to start from Sioux City, on the Missouri. 
After the attack at Birch Coulie and its relief, 
Little Crow, with a large part of his followers, 
branched off and went to the vicinity of Acton, 
and there attacked the command under Capt. 
Richard Strout, where a severe battle was 
fought, in which several of Captain Strout's 
men were killed. On the 3d of July, 1863, 
Crow ventured down to the neighborhood of 
Hutchinson with his young son, probably to 
get something which he had hidden, or to steal 
horses, and while he was picking berries a 
farmer named Lamson, who was in search of 
his cows, saw him and shot him dead. His 



scalp now decorates the walls of the Minnesota 
Historical Society. 



THE CAMPAIGN OP 1863. 

The remnant of Little Crow's followers were 
supposed to be rendezvoused at Devil's lake, 
in Dakota Territory, and reinforced by a large- 
body of the Upper Sioux. An expedition 
against them was devised by General Tope, 
to be commanded by General Sibley. It was 
to assemble at a point near the mouth of the 
Redwood river, some twenty-five miles above 
Fort Ridgely. On the 7th of June, 1S63, Gen- 
eral Sibley arrived at the point of departure, 
which was named Camp Tope in honor of the 
commanding general. The force composing 
the expedition was as follows: One company 
of Pioneers under Captain Chase; ten compa- 
nies of the Sixth Regiment, under Colonel 
Crooks; eight companies of the Tenth Regi- 
ment, under Colonel Baker; nine companies of 
the Seventh, under Lieutenant Colonel Mar- 
shall; eight pieces of artillery, under Captain 
Jones; nine companies of Minnesota Mounted 
Rangers, under Colonel McPhail; seventy-five 
Indian scouts under Major Brown, George Mc- 
Leod and Major Dooley; in all three thousand 
and fifty-two infantry, eight hundred cavalry 
and one hundred and forty-eight artillerymen. 
The command, from the nature of the country 
it had to traverse, was compelled to depend 
upon its own supply train, which was com 
posed of two hundred and twenty-five six-mule 
wagons. The staff was complete, consisting of 
Adjutant General Olin, Brigade Commissary 
Forbes, Assistant Commissary and Ordnance 
Officer Atchinson, Commissary Clerk Spencer. 
Quartermaster Corning, Assistant Quarter- 
master Kimball, Aides-de-camp, Lieutenants 
Pope, Beaver, Hawthorne and A. St. Clair 
Plandrau, Chaplain Rev. S. R. Riggs. 

The column moved from Camp Pope on June 
Kith, 1S63. The weather was intensely hot, 
and the country over which the army had to 
march was wild and uninhabited. At first the 
Indians retreated in the direction of the Brit- 
ish line, but it was discovered that their course 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



83 



had t»een changed to the direction of the Mis- 
souri river. They had probably heard that 
General Sully had been delayed by low water 
and hoped to be able to cross to the west 
bank of that stream before his arrival to inter- 
cept them, with the future hope that they 
would, no doubt, be reinforced by the Sioux 
inhabiting the country west of the Missouri. 
On the 4th of July the expedition reached the 
Big Bend of the Cheyenne river. On the 17th 
of July Colonel Sibley received reliable infor- 
mation that the main body of the Indians was 
moving toward the Missouri, which was on the 
20th of July confirmed by a visit at Camp 
Atchison of about three hundred Chippewa 
half-breeds, led by a Catholic priest named 
Father Andre. On becoming satisfied that the 
best fruits of the march could be attained by 
bending towards the Missouri, the General de- 
cided to relieve his command of as much im- 
pedimenta as was consistent with comfort and 
safety, and thus increase the rapidity of its 
movements. He therefore established a per- 
manent post at Camp Atchison, about fifty 
miles southeasterly from Devil's lake, where 
he left all the sick and disabled men and a 
large portion of his ponderous train, with a 
sufficient guard to defend them if attacked. 
He then immediately started for the Missouri 
with one thousand four hundred and thirty-six 
infantry, five hundred and twenty cavalry, one 
hundred pioneers and artillery and twenty-five 
days' rations. On the 22nd he crossed the 
James river, forty-eight miles west of Camp 
Atchison, and on the 24th reached the vicinity 
of Big Mound, beyond the second ridge of the 
Missouri coteau. Here the scouts reported 
large bodies of Indians with Red Plume and 
Standing Buffalo among them. 



BATTLE OF BIG MOUND. 

The General, expecting an attack on the 
24th, corralled his train and threw up some 
earthworks to enable a smaller force to defend 
it. The Indians soon appeared. Dr. Weiser, 
surgeon of the First Rangers, supposing he saw 
some old friends among them, approached too 



close and was instantly killed. Lieutenant 
Freeman, who had wandered some distance 
from the camp, was also killed. The battle 
opened at three P. M., in the midst of a terrific 
thunderstorm, and after some sharp fighting 
the Indians, numbering about fifteen hundred, 
fled in the direction of their camp, and were 
closely pursued. A general panic ensued, the 
Indian camp was abandoned, and the whole 
throng, men, women and children, fled before 
the advancing forces. Numerous charges were 
made upon them, amidst the roaring of the 
thunder and the flashing of the lightning. One 
private was killed by lightning, and Colonel 
McPhail's saber was knocked out of his grasp 
by the same force. 

The Indians are reported to have lost in this 
fight eighty killed and wounded. They also 
lost nearly all their camp equipment. They 
were pursued about fifteen miles, and had it 
not been for a mistake in the delivery of an 
order by Lieutenant Beaver, they would un- 
doubtedly have been overtaken and destroyed. 
The order was to bivouac where night caught 
the pursuing troops, but was misunderstood 
to return. This unfortunate error gave the In- 
dians two days' start, and they put a wide gap 
between themselves ami the troops. The Bat- 
tle of Big Mound, as this engagement was 
called, was a decided victory and counted heav- 
ily in the scale of advantage, as it put the sav- 
ages on the run and disabled them from prose- 
cut inii' further hostilities. 



BATTLE OF DEAD BUFFALO LAKE. 

On the 2Cth the command again moved in 
the direction of the fleeing Indians. Their 
abandoned camp was passed on that day early 
in Hie morning. About noon large bodies of 
the enemy were discovered and a brisk fight en- 
sued. Attacks and counter attacks were made, 
and a determined fight kept up until about 
three P. M., when a bold dash was made by the 
Indians to stampede the animals which were 
herded on the banks of a lake; but the attempt 
was promptly met and defeated. The Indians, 
foiled at all points and having lost heavily in 



4 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



killed and wounded, retired from the field. At 
nighl earthworks were thrown up to prevent a 
surprise, but none was attempted, and this 
ended the battle of Dead Buffalo lake. 

The General was now convinced that the In- 
dians were going toward the Missouri with the 
intention of putting the river between them 
and his command, and, expecting General 
Sully's force to be there to intercept them, he 
determined to push them on as rapidly as pos- 
sible, inflicting all the damage he could in their 
flight. The campaign was well conceived, and 
had Sully arrived in time the result would un- 
doubtedly have been the complete destruction 
or capture of the Indians. But low water de- 
layed Sully to such an extent that he failed to 
arrive in time, and the enemy succeeded in 
crossing the river before General Sibley could 
overtake them. 



BATTLE OF STONY LAKE. 

On the 28th of July Indians were again seen 
in large numbers. They endeavored to encircle 
the troops. They certainly presented a force 
of two thousand fighting men, and must have 
been reinforced by friends from the west side 
of the Missouri. They were undoubtedly fight- 
ing to keep the soldiers back until their fami- 
lies could cross the river. The troops were 
well handled. A tremendous effort was made 
to break our lines, but the enemy was repulsed 
at all points. The artillery was effective and 
the Indians finally fled in a panic and rout 
towai'ds the Missouri. They were hotly pur- 
sued, and on the 29th the troops crossed Apple 
creek, a small stream a few miles from the 
present site of Bismarck, the capital of North 
Dakota, and, pushing on, struck the Missouri 
at a point about four miles above Burnt Boat 
island. The Indians had succeeded in crossing 
the river with their families, but in a very de- 
moralized condition as to supplies and camp 
equipage. They were plainly visible on the 
blufl's on the opposite side. It was here that 
Lieutenant Beaver lost his life while carrying 
an order. He missed the trail and was am- 



bushed and killed. He was a young English- 
man who had volunteered to accompany the 
expedition, and whom General Sibley had 
placed upon his staff as an aide. 

Large quantities of wagons and other ma- 
terial abandoned by the Indians in their haste 
to cross the river were destroyed. The bodies 
of Lieutenant Beaver and a private of the 
Sixth Regiment, who was killed in the same 
way, were recovered and buried. It was clear 
that the Indians, on learning of the magnitude 
of the expedition, never contemplated over- 
coming it in battle, and made their movements 
with reference to delaying its progress, while 
they pushed their women and children toward 
and across the river, knowing there was no 
resting place for them on this side. They suc- 
ceeded admirably, but their success was solely 
at 1 1 ibuted to the failure of General Sully to ar- 
rive in time. General Sibley's part of the cam- 
paign was carried out to the letter and every 
man in it, from the commander to the private, 
is entitled to the highest praise. 

On August 1, the command broke camp for 
home. As was learned afterwards, General 
Sully was then distant down the river one hun- 
dred and sixty miles. His delay was no fault 
of his, as it was occasioned by insurmountable 
obstacles. The march home was a weary, but 
uneventful one. The campaign of 1863 may be 
summed up as follows: The troops marched 
nearly 1,200 miles. They fought three well- 
contested battles. They drove from eight to 
ten thousand Indians out of the State and 
across the Missouri river. They lost only seven 
killed and three wounded, and inflicted upon 
the enemy so severe a loss that he never again 
returned to his old haunts. For his meri- 
torious services General Sibley was appointed 
a Major General by brevet on November 20, 
1865, which appointment was duly confirmed 
by the Senate, and he was commissioned on 
April 7, 1866. 

In July, 1863, a regiment of cavalry was 
authorized by the Secretary of War to be 
raised by Maj. E. A. C. Hatch for duty on the 
Northern frontier. Several companies were re- 
cruited and marched to Pembina on the ex- 
treme northern border, where they performed 



HISTORY OP MINNESOTA. 



85 



valuable services and suffered incredible hard- 
ships. The regiment was called Hatch's Bat- 
talion. 



CAMPAIGN OF 1864. 

The government very wisely decided net to 
allow the Indian question to rest upon the re- 
sults of the campaign of 1S63, which left the 
Indians in possession of the country west of 
the Missouri, rightly supposing that they might 
construe their escape from General Sibley the 
previous year into a victory. II therefore sent 
mit another expedition in ls<>4 to pursue and 
attack them beyond the Missouri. The plan 
and outfit were very similar to that of isi»:;. 
General Sully was again to proceed up the Mis 
souri with a large command ami meet a force 
sent out from Minnesota, which forces, when 
combined, were to march westward and find 
and punish the savages if possible. The expe- 
dition, as a whole, was under the command of 
General Sully. It consisted of two brigades, 
the first composed of Iowa and Kansas infan- 
try and cavalry, and Brackett's Battalion, to 
the number of several thousand, which was to 
start from Sioux City and proceed up the Mis 
souri in steamboats. The Second embraced 
the Eighth Regiment of Minnesota Volunteer 
Infantry under Colonel Thomas, mounted on 
ponies, the Second Minnesota Cavalry under 
Colonel MacLaren, the Third Minnesota Bat- 
tery under Captain Jones. The Second Bri- 
gade was commanded by Colonel Thomas. 
This brigade left Port Snelling on June 1, and 
marched westward. General Sibley and staff 
accompanied it as far as Fort Ridgely. On the 
9th of June it passed Wood lake, the scene of 
the fight in 18(12. About this point it overtook 
a large train of emigrants on their way to 
Idaho, who had with them Kill wagon loads of 
supplies. This train was escorted to the Mis 
souri river safely. The march was wearisome 
in the extreme with intensely hot weather and 
very bad water, and was only enlivened by the 
appearance occasionally of a herd of buffalo, 
a band of antelope or a straggling elk. The 
movements of the command were carefully 



watched by Hying bands of Indians during iis 
whole march. On July 1st, the .Missouri was 
reached at a point where now stands Fort Rice. 
General Sully and the First Brigade had ar- 
rived there the day before. The crossing was 
made by the boats that brought up the First 
Brigade. The column was immediately di- 
rected toward Cannon Ball river, where 1,800 
lodges of Indians were reported to be camped. 
The Indians fled before (lie approaching troops. 
<>ii the last of July the Heart river was 
reached, where a camp was formed, and the 
tents and teams left behind. Thus relieved, the 
command pressed forward for an Indian camp 
eighty miles northward. On the 2nd of August 
the Indians were found in large numbers on 
the Big Knife river in the Bad Lands. These 
were Unca-Papa Sioux, who had murdered a 
party of miners from Idaho the year before and 
had given aid and comfort to the Minnesota 
refugee Indians. They were attacked and a 
Aery spirited engagement ensued, in which the 
enemy was badly beaten and suffered severe 
losses. The place where this battle was fought 
was called Ta-ka-ho-ku-tay, or the bluff where 
the man shot the deer. 

On the next day, August 3, the command 
moved west through the Bad Lands, and just 
as it emerged from this terribly ragged coun- 
try it was sharply attacked by a large body of 
Indians. The fight lasted through two days 
and nights, when the enemy retired in haste. 
They were very roughly handled in this en- 
gagement. 

General Sully then crossed to the west side 
of the Yellowstone river, where the weary sol- 
diers found two steamboats awaiting them 
with ample supplies. In crossing this rapid 
river the command lost three men and about 
twenty horses. From this point they came 
home by the way of Forts Union, Berthold and 
Stevenson, reaching Fort Rice on the 9th of 
September. 

On this trip General Sully located Forts 
Rice. Stevenson and Berthold. 

On reaching Fort Rice, considerable anxiety 
was felt for Colonel Fisk, who, with a squad of 
fifty troops, had left the fort as an escort for a 
train of Idaho immigrants, and had been at- 



86 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



tacked one hundred and eighty miles west of 
the fort and had been compelled to intrench. 
He had sent for reinforcements and General 
Sully sent him three hundred men, who extri- 
cated him from his perilous position. 

The Minnesota Brigade returned by way of 
Fort Wadsworth, where they arrived on Sep 
tember 27. Here Major Hose, with six com 
panies of the Second Cavalry, was left to gar- 
rison the post, the balance of the command 
icaching Fort Snelling on the 12th of October. 

In June. 1865, another expedition left Minne- 
sota for the West under Colonel Callahan of 
Wisconsin, which went as far as Devil's lake. 
The first, second and fourth sections of the 
Third Minnesota Battery accompanied it, and 
again in 1866 an expedition started from Fort 
Abercrombie which included the first section 
of the Third Battery, under Lieutenant Whip- 
ple. As no important results followed from 
these two latter expeditions I only mention 
them as being parts of the Indian War. 

The number of Indians engaged in this war, 
together with their superior fighting qualities, 
their armament, and the country occupied by 
them, gives it rank among the most important 
of the Indian Wars fought since the first settle- 
ment of the country on the Atlantic Coast. But 
when viewed in the light of the number of set- 
tlers massacred, the amount of property de- 
stroyed and the horrible atrocities committed 
by the savages, it far surpasses them all. 

I have dwelt upon this war to such an extent 
because I regard it as the most' important 
event in the history of our State, and desire to 
perpetuate the facts more especially connected 
with the gallant resistance offered by the set- 
tlers in its inception. Not an instance of timid- 
ity is recorded. The inhabitants engaged in the 
peaceful pursuits of agriculture, utterly unpre- 
pared for war, sprang to the front on the first 
indication of danger, and checked the advance 
of the savage enemy in his initial efforts. The 
importance of battles should never be meas- 
ured by the number engaged, or the lists of 
killed and wounded, but by the consequences 
of their results. 1 think the repulse of the In- 
dians at Fort Ridgely and New Clin saved the 
State of Minnesota from a disaster, the magni- 



tude of which cannot he estimated. Their ad- 
vance was checked at the very frontier and 
they were compelled to retreat, thus affording 
t inie and opportunity for the whites to organi/.e 
for systematic action. Had they not met this 
early check, it is more than probable that the 
Chippewas on the upper Mississippi and the 
Winnebagoes in the lower Minnesota valley 
would have joined them, and the war have 
been carried into the heart of the State. In- 
stances of a similar character have occurred in 
our early wars which illustrate my position. 
The Battle of Oriscany, which was fought in 
the Revolutionary War in the valley of the 
Mohawk, between Rome and Utica, was not 
more of an encounter than Ridgely or New 
[Tim, yet it has been characterized as one of the 
decisive battles of the world because it pre- 
vented a junction of the British forces under 
St. Ledger in the west and Burgoyne in the 
east and made American independence pos- 
sible. The State of New York recognized tic 
value of Oriscany just one hundred years after 
the battle was fought by the erection of a 
monument to commemorate it. The State of 
Minnesota has done better by erecting impos- 
ing monuments on both the battlefields of 
Ridgely and New Ulm, the inscriptions on 
which give a succinct history of the respective 
events. 

The State also presented each of the defend- 
ers of Fort Ridgely with a handsome bronze 
medal, especially struck for the purpose, the 
presentation of which took place at the time of 
the dedication of the monument, on the 20th 
day of August, 1890. 

The medal has a picture of the fort on its 
obverse side, surrounded by the words, "De- 
fender of Fort Ridgely. August IS 27, 1802." 
Just over the flagstaff, in a scroll, is the legend 
in Sioux. "Ti-yo-pa-na-ta-ka-pi," which means, 
"It shut the door against us," referring to the 
battle having obstructed the further advance 
of the Indians. This was said by one of the In- 
dians in the attacking party in giving his view 
of the effect of the repulse, and adopted by the 
committee having charge of the preparation of 
the medal, as being appropriate and true. 
On the reverse side are the words, "Presented 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



87 



by the State of Minnesota to ," 

encircled by a wreath of moccasin flowers, 
which is the flower of the State. 

The State has also placed monuments at 
Birch Coulie, Camp Release and Acton. I re- 
gret to be compelled to say that a majority of 
the committee having charge of the building of 
the Birch Coulie monument so far failed in the 
performance of their duties as to the location 
of the monument and formulating its inscrip- 
tions that the Legislature felt compelled to 
pass an act to correct their errors. The correc- 
tion has not yet been made, but in the cause of 
true history it is to be hoped that it will be in 
the near future. The State also erected a 
handsome monument in the cemetery of Fort 
Ridgely to Captain Marsh and the twenty-three 
men of his company that were killed at the 
ferry near the Lower Sioux agency on August 
18, 1862, and by special act passed long after, 
at the request of old settlers, added the name 
of refer Quinn, the interpreter who was killed 
at the same time and place. The State also 
built a monument in the same cemetery in re- 
membrance of the wife of Dr. Muller, the post 
surgeon at Ridgely during the siege, on ac- 
count of the valuable services rendered by her 
in nursing' the wounded soldiers. 



able to enter extensively into the catalogue of 
its productions beyond the needs of domestic 
use. 



A LONG PERIOD OF PEACE AND PROS- 
PERITY. 

After the stirring events of the Civil and In- 
dian Wars, Minnesota resumed its peaceful 
ways and continued to grow and prosper for a 
long series of years, excepting the period from 
1873 to 1876, when it was afflicted with the 
plague of grasshoppers. Possessed of the 
many advantages that nature has bestowed 
upon it, there was nothing else for it to do. 
The State, as far as it was then developed, was 
exclusively agricultural, and wheat was its 
staple production, although almost every char- 
acter of grain and vegetable can be produced 
in exceptional abundance. Potatoes of the first 
quality were among its earliest exports, but 
that crop is not sufficiently valuable or port- 



INTRODUCTION OF THE NEW PROCESS 
OF MILLING WHEAT. 

The wheat raised in Minnesota was and al- 
ways has been of the spring variety, and up to 
about the year 1S74 was regarded in the mar- 
kets of the world as an inferior article of grain 
when compared with the winter wheat of 
States further south; and the flour made from 
it was also looked upon as of much less value 
than its competitor made from winter wheat. 
The State labored under this disability in real- 
izing upon its chief product for many years, 
both in the wheat and the flour made from it. 
.Many mills were erected at the Falls of St. 
Anthony with a very great output of flour, 
which, with the lumber manufactured at that 
point, composed the chief exports of the State. 
The process of grinding wheal was the old 
style, of an upper and nether millstone, which 
left the flour of darker color, less nutritious 
and less desirable than that from the winter 
wheat made in the same way. About the year 
1871 it was discovered that a new process of 
manufacturing flour was in operation on the 
Danube and at Budapesth. Mr. George H. 
Christian, a partner of Gen. C. C. Washburn, 
in the milling business at Minneapolis, studied 
the invention, which consisted of crushing the 
wheat by means <if rollers made of steel or por- 
celain, instead of grinding it, as of old, to 
which the French had added a new process of 
eliminating the bran specs from the crushed 
product by means of a flat oscillating screen or 
bolt with an upward blast of air through it, 
upon which the crushed product was placed 
and cleansed of all bran impurities. In 1871 
Gen. C. C. Washburn and Mr. Christian intro- 
duced this French invention into their mills in 
Minneapolis, and derived from it great advan- 
tage in the appearance and value of their flour. 
This was called a "middlings purifier." In 
1N74 they introduced the roller crushing pro- 
cess, and the result was that the hard spring 
wheat returned a flour superior to the product 



88 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



of the winter wheal and placed Minnesota upon 
more than an equality with the best flour-pro- 
ducing States in the Union. This process has 
been universally adopted throughout the 
Tinted States in all milling localities with 
great advantage to that industry. 

It is a rather curious fact that as all oar 
milling knowledge was originally inherited 
from England, which country is very sluggish 
in the adoption of new methods, that it was not 
until our improved flour reached that country 
that the English millers accepted the new 
method and have since acted upon it. It is a 
case of the pupil instructing his preceptor. 

I regard the introduction of these improve- 
ments in the manufacture of flour into this 
State as of prime importance to its growth and 
increase of wealth and strength. It is esti- 
mated by the best judges that the value of our 
spring wheat was increased at least twenty per 
cent by their adoption, and when we consider 
that the State produced, in 1898, 78,418,000 
bushels of wheat, its magnitude can be better 
appreciated. It formerly required five bushels 
of wheat to make a barrel of flour; under the 
new process it only takes four bushels and 
seven pounds to make a barrel of the same 
weight, 196 pounds. 

The only record that is kept of Hour in Min- 
nesota is for the two points of Minneapolis and 
the head of the lakes; the latter includes Du- 
luth and Superior in Wisconsin. The output 
of Minneapolis for the crop year of 1898-9 was 
15,164,881 barrels, and for Duluth-Supeiior for 
the same period, 2,637,035 barrels. The esti- 
mate for the whole State is 25,000,000 barrels. 
These figures are taken from the Northwestern 
Miller, a reliable publication in Minneapolis. 

The credit of having introduced the Hun- 
garian and French processes into Minnesota is 
due primarily to the late Gen. C. C. Washburn 
of La Crosse, Wisconsin, who was greatly 
aided by his partner at the time, Mr. George H. 
Christian of Minneapolis. 

While I am convinced that the credit of first 
having introduced these valuable inventions 
into Minnesota belongs to Gen. ('. ('.Washburn 
and his partner, Mr. George II. Christian, I am 
in justice bound to add thai Gov. John S. Pills- 



bury and the late Mr. Charles A. Pillsbury, 
who were large and enterprising millers a I 
Minneapolis, owning the Excelsior Mills, im- 
mediately after its introduction adopted the 
process and put it into their mills, and by em- 
ploying American skilled millers to set up and 
operate their machinery, succeeded in securing 
the first absolutely perfect automatic mill of 
the new kind in the country; General Wash- 
burn having imported Hugarian millers to 
start and operate his experimental mills, found 
himself somewhat handicapped by their ineffi- 
ciency and sluggishness in adopting American 
ways and customs. 



THE DISCOVERY OF IRON. 

From the earliest days of the Territory the 
people had predicted the growth of cities at 
several points; at St. Paul, because it was the 
head of navigation of the Mississippi river; at 
St. Anthony, on account of its great water 
power; at Superior, as being the head of navi- 
gation of the Great Lake System, and at Man- 
kato, from its location at the great bend of the 
Minnesota river. It must be remembered that 
when these prophecies were made, Minneapolis 
and Duluth had no existence, and Superior was 
the natural outlet of the St. Louis river into 
Lake Superior; and had its land titles not been 
so complicated when the railroad from St. Paul 
to the head of the lakes was projected, there is 
no doubt Superior would have been the ter- 
minus of the road. However it was found to be 
almost impossible to procure title to any land 
in Superior on account of its having been sold 
by the proprietors in undivided interests to 
parties all over the country, and it was situ- 
ated in Wisconsin. The railroad people, accord- 
ingly, procured the charter of the company to 
make its northern terminus on the Minnesota 
side of the harbor, where Duluth now stands, 
and founded that town as the terminus of the 
road. Some years after, Minnesota Point was 
cut by a canal at its base or shore end, and the 
entrance to the harbor changed from its natu- 
ral inlet around the end of the point to this 
canal. This improvement has proved to be of 



II [STORY OF MINNESOTA. 



89 



vast importance to the city of Duluth and to 
the shipping interests of the State, as the natu- 
ral entrance was difficult and dangerous. 

Duluth increased in importance from year Lo 
year by reason of the natural advantages of its 
situation as the outlet of much of the exports 
of the State, and the inlet of a large portion of 
its imports. As railroads progressed, it !»• 
came connected with the wheat producing 
areas of the State, which resulted in the erec- 
tion of elevators for the shipment of wheat and 
mills to grind it. As nearly all the coal con 
sumed in the State came in by the gateway of 
Duluth, immense coal docks were constructed 
with all the modern inventions for unloading it 
from ships and loading it on cars for distribu- 
tion. Duluth soon attained metropolitan pro- 
portions. About the year 1870 Mr. George C. 
Stone became a resident of the city and en- 
gaged in business. 

In 1873 Jay Cooke, who had been an impor- 
tant factor in the construction of the Northern 
Pacific Railroad, failed, which was a serious 
blow to Duluth. Mr. Stone had given his at- 
tention largely to the investigation of the min- 
eral resources of the Lake Superior region in 
Minnesota, and had become convinced of the 
presence of large beds of iron ore in its north- 
eastern portion, now known as the Vermillion 
range. When he first made known his discov- 
ery the location of the ore was so remote from 
civilization that he found it difficult to interest 
any one in his enterprise. Few shared his 
faith, but undismayed by lack of support he 
undertook with steady persistence the task of 
securing the capital necessary to develop what 
he was convinced was a great natural wealth 
producing field. Comparatively alone, and 
with little encouragement at home, he visited 
the money centers of the country and assid- 
uously labored to induce men of capital to em- 
bark in the enterprise, but found it to be uphill 
work. 

The first men whose support he secured were 
Charlemagne Tower, of Ppttsville, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Samuel A. Munson, of Utica, New 
York, both men of education and great wealth. 
They became sufficiently interested to secure a 
proper test of the matter. Professor Chester, 



of Hamilton College, was sent out on two occa- 
sions. Mr. Munson died, and after the lapse 
of a few years Charlemagne Tower, then a 
resident of Philadelphia, undertook and did fur- 
nish the necessary funds to make the develop- 
ment, which involved the expense of four 
million dollars to build a railroad eighty 
miles in length, with docks anil other operating 
facilities. 

The railroad was opened in July, 1884, and 
there was shipped that season (12,124 tons of 
ore, and in 1885 the shipment reach 225,000 
tons. In 188G, 304,000 tons; in 1887, 394,000 
tons; in 1888, 512,000 tons. The output of the 
iron mines at and about the head of the lakes 
had by 1808 grown to the enormous quantity of 
5,871,801 tons. The grade of the ore is the 
highest in the market. This product is one of 
the most important in the State and seems 
destined to expand indefinitely. 

No better idea of the growth and importance 
of Duluth, and, in the same connection, the 
advance of the State, since the War, can be 
presented than by a statement of a few aggre- 
gates of different industries centered at the 
head of the lakes. The most recent record ob- 
tainable is for the year 1898. For example: 

Lumber cut, 544,318,000 feet. 

Coal received, 2,500,000 tons. 

Number of vessels arrived and cleared, 
12,150. 

Wheat received, and flour as wheat, 82,118,- 
129 bushels. 

Other grain, 19,428.022 bushels. 

Flonr manufactured, 2,400,025 barrels. 

Capacity of elevators, 24,650,000 bushels. 

Capacity of flour mills per day, 22,000 bar- 
rels. 

Many other statistics could be given, but the 
above are sufficient to show the unexampled 
growth of the State in that vicinity. 



COMMERCE THROUGH THE ST. MARY'S 
FALLS CANAL. 

Another very interesting and instructive ele- 
ment in considering the growth of Minnesota 
is the commerce passing through the St. Mary's 



90 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



Canal, which connects Lake Superior with 
Lakes Huron and Michigan, the greater part 
of which is supplied by Minnesota. No record 
of the number of sailing vessels or steamers 
passing through the canal was kept until the 
year 1864. During that year there were 1,045 
sailing vessels and 3GG steamers. The last re- 
port for the year 1898 shows an increase of 
sailing vessels to 4,449 and of steamers to 
12,461. The first record of the amount of 
freight passing the canal, which was opened in 
1881, showed an aggregate of 1,567,741 net tons 
of all kinds of freight. In 1898 it had grown to 
the enormous sum of 21,234,664 tons. These 
figures, like distances in astronomical calcula- 
tions, require a special mental effort to fully 
comprehend them. An incident occurred in 
September, 1899, in connection with this canal 
traffic, that assists in understanding its im- 
mense proportions. By an accident to a 
steamer the channel of the river was blocked 
for a short time, until she could be removed, 
during which time a procession of waiting 
steamers was formed forty miles in length. 

I have been unable to obtain any reliable 
figures with which to present a contrast be- 
tween the commerce of this canal and that of 
the Suez, connecting the Mediterranean with 
the Red Sea, but it is generally estimated that 
the St. Mary's largely exceeds the Suez, al- 
though the commerce of the world with the 
Orient and Australia largely passes through 
the latter. 



AGRICULTURE. 



In the early days of Minnesota its agricul- 
tural population was largely centered in the 
southeastern portion of the State. The soil 
was exceptionally fertile and produced wheat 
in unusual abundance. The Western farmer of 
early days was a careless cultivator, thinking 
more of the immediate results than permanent 
preservation of his land. Even if he was of the 
conservative old New England stock the gener- 
ous soil of the West, the freedom from social 
restraint, and the lessened labors of the farm, 
led him into more happy-go-lucky methods 
than he had been accustomed to in the East. 



It was Mark Twain who once said that if you 
plant a New England deacon in Texas you will 
find him in about a year with a game chicken 
under his ami, riding a mule on Sunday to a 
cock-fight. When farms were opened in the 
southeastern counties of Minnesota it was not 
an unusual thing to be rewarded with a crop 
of from thirty to forty bushels of wheat to the 
acre. The process of cultivation was simple 
and required scarcely any capital, so it was 
natural that the first comers should confine 
their efforts to the one product of wheat. They 
did so, regardless of the fact that the best soil 
will become exhausted unless reinforced. They 
became accustomed to think that land could 
always be had for the taking, and in twenty or 
twenty-five years the goose that laid the golden 
eggs died, and six or eight bushels were all 
they could extract from their lands. About 
1877 or 1878 they practically abandoned the 
culture of wheat and tried corn and hogs. 
This was an improvement, but not a great sip 
cess. Many of the farmers of the pioneering 
and roving class sold out and went West for 
fresh lands. 



DAIRYING. 



About this time the dairy business had be- 
come quite profitable in Iowa, and the Minne- 
sota farmers turned their attention to that 
branch of industry. Their lands were excel- 
lent for pasturing purposes and hay raising. 
They began in a small way with cows and bai- 
ter making, but from lack of experience ami 
knowledge of the business their progress was 
slow; however, it improved from year to year 
and now, in the year 1899, it has become one 
of the most important, successful and profit- 
able industries in the State, and the farmers of 
Southern Minnesota constitute the most inde- 
pendent and well-to-do class of all our citizens. 
It was not very long ago when a mortgage was 
an essential feature of a Minnesota farm, but 
they have nearly all been paid off, and the 
farmer of Southern Minnesota is found in 
the ranks of the stockholders and depositors of 
the banks, and if he has anything to do witli 
mortgages he is found on the winning side of 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



9' 



that dangerous instrument. A brief statement 
of the facts connected with the dairy business 
will demonstrate its magnitude. There are in 
the State at the present time: 

Creameries, about 700. 

Creamery patrons, 55,000. 

Capital invested, $3,000,000. 

Cows supplying milk, 410,000. 

Pounds of milk received (1898), 1,400,000,000. 

Pounds of butter made (1898), 63,000,000. 

Pounds of butter exported, 50,000,000. 

Gross receipts (1898), $10,400,000. 

Operating expenses (1898), $1,100,000. 

Paid to patrons, f8,600,000. 

Since 1884 Minnesota butter has been exhib- 
ited in competition with similar products from 
all the States in the Union and the butter-mak- 
ing countries of the world at all the principal 
fairs and expositions that have been held in 
the United States, and has taken more prizes 
than any other State or country. And its 
cheese has kept pace with its butter. There 
are in the State in active operation ninety-four 
cheese factories. This industry is constantly 
on the increase, and Minnesota is certainly 
destined to surpass every other State in the 
Union in this department of agriculture. 

While this new and valuable branch of in- 
dustry Mas gradually superseding (hat of 
wheat in Southern Minnesota, the latter was 
not being extinguished by any means, but sim- 
ply changing its habitat. About the time that 
wheat culture became unprofitable in Southern 
Minnesota, the valley of the Red River of the 
North began to attract attention, and it was 
at once discovered that it was the garden of 
the world for wheat culture. An intelligent 
and experienced farmer, Mr. Oliver Dalrymple, 
may be said to have been the pioneer of that 
enterprise. Lands in tin 1 valley were cheap, 
and he succeeded in gaining control of immense 
tracts and unlimited capital for their develop- 
ment. He opened these lands up to wheat cul- 
ture and gave to the world a new feature in 
agriculture, which acquired the name of the 
"Bonanza Farm." Some of these fauns em- 
braced sixty and seventy thousand acres of 
land and were divided by roads on the section 
lines. They were supplied with all the buildings 



necessary for the accommodation of the army 
of superintendents and employees that oper- 
ated them; also granaries and buildings for 
housing machinery; slaughter houses to pro- 
vision the operatives, telephone systems to fa- 
cilitate communication between distant points, 
and every other auxiliary to perfect an eco 
nomic management. These great farms, of 
course, produced wheat at more reduced rates 
than could the lesser ones, but did not materi- 
ally interfere with wheat production by the 
smaller farmers, as the output of 1898 of nearly 
79,000.000 bushels sufficiently proves. There 
seems to be no need of apprehension about the 
lauds of the Red river valley becoming ex- 
hausted, as they appear to be as enduring as 
those in the vallev of the Nile. 



THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA AND 
ITS SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE. 

The University of Minnesota, for the estab- 
lishment of which the United States donated 
to the State nearly 100,000 acres of land, and 
the agricultural college, which was similarly 
endowed, have been consolidated, and both 
have long been in successful operation. The 
University proper opened its doors for the ad- 
mission of students about the year 1869, and 
has since attained such proportions as to en- 
title it to a place among the leading educa- 
tional institutions of the United States; its roll 
of students for the last college year numbered 
over three thousand. Its curriculum embraces 
all studies generally taught in the colleges of 
this country, professional and otherwise. The 
state of efficiency and high standing of the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota is largely attributable to 
the work of its president, Hon. Cyrus North- 
rop, a graduate of Yale, who had attained emi- 
nence in the educational world before being 
called to the university. 

The School of Agriculture is of the highest 
importance to the welfare of the State. Its 
influence will soon remove one chief indus- 
try from dependence on the crude methods 
of the uneducated Western farmer, and place 
it upon a basis of scientific operation and man- 



9 2 



n [STORY OF MINNESOTA. 



agement. Every branch of the art of farming 
is taught in this institution, from a knowledge 
of the chemical properties of the soil and its 
adaptation to the different vegetable growths, 
to the scientific breeding and economical feed- 
ing of stock. Much of the success in the dairy 
branch of farming is the direcl result of knowl- 
edge gained at this school. II is well patron- 
ized by the young men of the Slate who intend 
to devote themselves to agriculture as a pro- 
fession. Quite recently a new department ha* 
been added to the institution for the instruc- 
tion of women in all that pertains to the proper 
education of the mistress of the farm. It goes 
without saying that when Minnesota farming 
is brought under the management # and control 
of men and women of scientific and practical 
education in that particular line, there will be 
a revolution for the better. 

The methods of instruction in this school are 
not merely theoretical. It possesses three ex- 
perimental farms for the practical illustration 
and application of its teachings, the principal 
one of which is situated at St. Anthony Park, 
and the other two respectively at Crookstou 
and Grand Rapids. Work is also done in an 
experimental way in Lyon county, but the 
State does not own the station. 



THE MINNESOTA STATE AGRICUL- 
TURAL SOCIETY. 

This society dates its corporate existence 
from the year 1868, although for many years 
previous to that date, even back to the Terri- 
torial days, a society had been in existence 
covering the main features of this organiza- 
tion. In 18C7 the State recognized this society 
by appropriating one thousand dollars for its 
encouragement. Its object was the promotion 
of agriculture, horticulture and the mechanic's 
arts. The society held annual fairs in different 
localities in the State, with varying success. 
until 1885. The comity of Ramsey then offered 
to convey to the State of Minnesota, forever, 
two hundred acres of land adjoining the city 
limits of St. Paul, for the purpose of holding 



annual exhibitions thereon, under the manage 
ment of the society, of all matters pertaining 
to 'agriculture, human art, industry or skill. 
The State met this munificent donation with 
the same liberal spirit that characterized the 
offer, and appropriated $100,000 for perma- 
nent improvements. 

The hoard of managers proceeded imme 
diately to erect the necessary buildings for tic 
flrsl exhibition, but found the appropriation 
inadequate by about $32,000, which was read- 
ily supplied by public-spirited citizens of St. 
Paul and Minneapolis. The Stale, being again 
appealed to in 1887, made a further appropria- 
tion of $50,0(10. 

In 1887 the society was reorganized by ail 
of the Legislature and ils membership desig 
nated ami made to consist of the following 
persons: 

First. Three delegates from each of tic 
county and district agricultural societies. 

Second. Honorary life members, who by 
reason of eminent services in agriculture, or in 
the arts and sciences connected therewith, or 
of long and faithful services in the society, or 
of benefits conferred upon it. 

Third. The president ex-officio of the Horti 
cultural Society, the Amber Cane Society, the 
State Dairymen's Association, the Southern 
Minnesota Fair Association, the State Poultry 
Association, the State Bee-Keeper's Associa- 
tion, and the president and secretary of the 
Farmer's Alliance. 

Fourth. The president of any society hav- 
ing for its object the promotion of any branch 
of agriculture, stock raising or improving, or 
mechanics relating to agriculture. 

By this selection of membership it will be 
seen that the society is composed of the lead- 
ing agriculturists of the State. It holds annual 
meetings in St. Paul for the transaction of its 
business. The State appropriates four thou 
sand dollars annually to aid in the payment of 
premiums to exhibitors. 

The society is in a prosperous condition ami 
holds annual fairs in the month of September 
on its grounds, which have been extensively 
improved. Each year there is a marked in- 
crease in the magnitude and variety of exhibits 
and extended interest and attendance. lis 
financial statement for the year 1808 was: 
Receipts, $62,523.70; expenditures, $56,850.*::. 
It has just closed ils fair for the year 1899, 
which in extent and perfection of its exhibits 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



93 



and financial results surpassed any of its pre- 
vious attempts. 

There are in the State the following named 
societies all more or less connected with agri- 
culture, and all in flourishing condition: 

The State Horticultural Society. 

The State Forestry Association. 

The Dairymen's Association. 

The State Butter and Cheese Maker's Asso- 
ciation. 

The State Farmer's Institute. 

The State Poultry Association. 

The State Bee Keeper's Association. 

And perhaps others. 

These associations have done much in the 
promotion of the agricultural interests of the 
State, and by their intelligent guidance will no 
doubt soon make it the leading agricultural 
State in the Union. 



THE SOLDIERS' HOME. 

In the 1887 it became apparent that the 
Civil War and the Minnesota Indian War had 
left a large number of soldiers of the State iu 
dependent circumstances from old age, wounds 
and other disabling causes. The State, recog- 
nizing its obligation to these men, determined 
to provide a home for their comfort and main- 
tenance. By an act of the Legislature, passed 
March 2, of that year, provision was made for 
the purchase of a site and the erection of suit- 
able buildings for that purpose. The act pro- 
vided for bids for the purpose of a site, and 
also authorized the acceptance of donations for 
that purpose. Minneapolis responded hand- 
somely by offering fifty-one acres of its beau- 
tiful Minnehaha Park as a donation. It was 
accepted, and is one of the most beautiful and 
picturesque locations that could have been 
found in the State, being mar the Mississippi 
river and the Falls of Minnehaha. The begin- 
ning of the home was small, one old house 
being used for the first six months, and then 
from year to year handsome and commodious 
brick houses were erected, until the home be- 
came adequate to accommodate all those who 
were entitled to its hospitality. The conditions 
of admission are, residence in Minnesota, serv- 
ice in the Mexican War, or in some Minnesota 



organization in the Civil or Indian war, honor- 
able discharge, and indigent circumstances. 
As there are no accommodations for the wives 
and families of the old soldiers and sailors at 
the home, provision is made for relief being- 
furnished to married soldiers at their own 
homes, so as to prevent the separation of fami- 
lies. There were in the home at the date of the 
last report, August 3, 1899, three hundred and 
sixty-two beneficiaries. The home is conducted 
by a board of trustees consisting of seven mem- 
bers, whose election is so arranged that they 
serve for six years. This beneficent establish- 
ment is to be commended as an evidence of the 
generosity and patriotism of the State. 



OTHER STATE INSTITUTIONS. 

I have been somewhat explicit in mentioning 
the institutions of the State which are con- 
nected with its prominent and permanent in- 
dustry—agriculture; but it must not be sup- 
posed that it has not provided for the many 
other interests that require regulation and con- 
trol to constitute a perfectly organized State 
government. There are, besides those I have 
mentioned: 

Four Normal Schools, located at Winona, 
Mankato, St. Cloud and Moorhead, all devoted 
to the education of teachers. 

State High and Graded Schools all over the 
State. 

State Board of Corrections and Charities. 

State Hospitals for the Insane, of which 
there are three, located as follows: One at St. 
Peter, one at Rochester, and one at Fergus 
Falls, and a fourth in contemplation. 

According to the latest report these hospi- 
tals contained 3,302 patients, as follows: St. 
Peter, 1,045; Rochester, 1,196; and Fergus 
Falls 1,061. For a small new State, this show- 
ing would seem alarming and indicate that a 
very large percentage of the population was 
insane, and that the rest were preparing to be- 
come so. The truth is, that a case of insanity 
originating in Minnesota is quite as excep- 
tional and rare as other diseases, and can 
usually be accounted for by some self-abuse of 
the patient. The population is drawn from 



94 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



such diverse sources, and the intermarriages 
are crossed upon so many different nationali- 
ties, that hereditary insanity ought to be al- 
most unknown. The climate and the general 
pursuits of the people all militate against the 
prevalence of the malady. 

The explanation of the existence of the 
numerous cases is, as I am informed by the 
very highest authority on the subject, that in 
nearly all European countries it has become 
the habit of families afflicted with insanity to 
export their unfortunates to America as soon 
as any symptoms appear, and thus provide for 
them for the rest of their lives. I cannot say 
that the governments whence these people emi- 
grate participate in the fraud, but it is not rea- 
sonable to suppose that they would interpose 
any serious objections, even should they have 
knowledge of the fact. A comparison of the 
nationalities of the patients found in these hos- 
pitals with the American element, given by the 
census of the State, proves my statement, and 
an inquiry of the medical authorities of these 
institutions will place the question beyond 
doubt. 



MINNESOTA INSTITUTE FOR DEFEC- 
TIVES. 

There are also State schools for the deaf, 
dumb, blind and the feeble-minded. These in- 
stitutions are all located at Faribault in Rice 
county, and each has a very handsome, com- 
modious and in every way suitable building, 
where these unfortunates are instructed in 
every branch of learning and industry of which 
they are capable. During the last two years 
there have been enrolled two hundred and sev- 
enty-five deaf and dumb children in the school 
especially devoted to them, where they receive 
the best education that science and experience 
can provide. This school has already been in- 
strumental in preparing hundreds of deaf and 
mute youth to be useful and intelligent citizens 
of the State, and year by year a few are grad- 
uated, well prepared to take their places beside 
the hearing and speaking youth who leave the 
public schools. About one-third of the time is 
devoted to manual training. 



The school for the blind is entirely separate 
from that of the deaf and dumb, and is 
equipped with all the appliances of a modern 
special school of this character. It makes a 
specialty of musical instruction and industrial 
training, such as broom-making, hammock 
weaving, bead work and sewing. 

The course of study embraces a period of 
seven years, beginning with the kindergarten 
and ending with the ordinary studies of En- 
glish classes in the high schools. The school is 
free to all blind children in the State between 
the ages of eight and twenty-six, to whom 
board, care and tuition are furnished. The 
average number of pupils at this school for the 
past few years is between seventy and one hun- 
dred. 



STATE SCHOOL FOR DEPENDENT AND 
NEGLECTED CHILDREN. 

This school is located at Owatonna in Steele 
county, and is one of the most valuable of all 
the many establishments which the State has 
provided for the encouragement of good citi- 
zenship. There are eleven buildings, which 
comprise all the agencies that tend to make 
abandoned children useful citizens and rescue 
them from a life of vagrancy and crime. The 
object of this institution is to provide a tem- 
porary home and school for the dependent and 
neglected children of the State. No child in 
Minnesota need go without a home if the offi- 
cers of the several counties do their duty. 
There is not a semblance of any degrading or 
criminal feature in the manner of obtaining 
admittance to this school. Under the law, it is 
the duty of every county commissioner, when 
he finds any child dependent or in danger of 
becoming so, to take steps to send him to this 
school. The process of admission wisely guards 
against the separation of parent and child, but 
keeps in view the ultimate good of the latter. 
Once admitted, it becomes the child of the 
State, all other authority over it being can- 
celed. Every child old enough to work has 
some fitting task assigned to it, to the end of 
training it mentally, morally and physically 
for useful citizenship. They are sent from the 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



95 



school into families wanting them, but this 
does not deprive them of the watchful care of 
the State, which, through its agents, visits 
them in their adopted homes and sees that they 
are well cared for. 

On January 1, 1899, there had been received 
into the school from seventy-two counties 1,824 
children, of whom 1.131 were boys and 09:? 
were girls. Of these, 233 were then in the 
school, the others having been placed in good 
homes. It is known that eighty-three per cent 
of these children had developed into young 
men and women of good character. 



THE MINNESOTA STATE TRAINING 
SCHOOL. 

This institution was formerly "The Minne- 
sota State Reform School," and was located in 
St. Paul. In 1895 the Legislature changed its 
name to "The Minnesota State Training School 
for Boys and Girls," and its location has been 
changed to Red Wing, in the county of Good- 
hue. This institution has to do with criminals, 
and the statute provides, "That whenever an 
infant over the age of eight years and under 
the age of sixteen years shall have been duly 
convicted of any crime punishable with im- 
prisonment, except the crime of murder, or 
shall be convicted of vagrancy or of incorrig 
ibly vicious conduct." the sentence shall be to 
the guardianship of the board of managers of 
this school. Here they are given a good common 
school education and instructed in the trades 
of cabinet making, carpenter work, tailoring, 
shoemaking, blacksmithing, printing, farming, 
gardening, etc. 

The inmates are furloughed under proper 
conditions, but the State watches over them 
through an agent, who provides homes for the 
homeless and employment for those who need 
help. 



intermediate correctional school between the 
training school and the State prison, the ob- 
ject being to provide a place for boys and 
young men from sixteen to thirty years of age, 
never before convicted of crime, where they 
may, under as favorable circumstances as pos- 
sible by discipline and education best adapted 
to that end, form such habits and character ;is 
will prevent their continuing in crime, fit them 
for self-support, and accomplish their reforma- 
tion. 

The law provides for an indeterminate sen 
fence, allowing of parole when earned by con- 
tinuous good conduct, and final release when 
reformation is strongly probable. Honest 
labor is required every day of each inmate. 
Almost every occupation and employment is 
carried on in a practical way, and each inmate 
is learning to fill some honest place and to do 
useful work. The workings of this reforma- 
tory have been very satisfactory and have un- 
doubtedly rescued many young people from a 
life of crime. 



MINNESOTA STATE REFORMATORY. 

This institution was established in 1887 and 
is located at St. Cloud. It is designed as an 



THE MINNESOTA STATE PRISON. 

All prisons where criminals are sent to work 
out sentences for crimes committed are alike 
on general principles, and the Minnesoia 
prison, situated at Stillwater, differs only in 
the fact that it combines iu its administration 
all the modern discoveries of sociological re- 
search which tend to ameliorate the condition 
of the prisoner and fit him for the duties of 
good citizenship when discharged. 

The plant is extensive and thorough. The 
labor of the prisoners is now devoted to three 
industries, the manufacture of binding twine, 
high school scientific apparatus on State ac- 
count, and the manufacture of boots and shoes. 

The discipline and management of the prison 
is the best. The most advanced principles of 
penology are in force. Sentences are reduced 
by good conduct, and everything is done to re- 
form as well as punish the prisoner. A news- 
paper is published by the convicts and a li- 
brary of five thousand volumes is furnished for 
their mental improvement. Nothing known to 



96 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



modern, social and penal science is omitted 
from the management. 



THE MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

This society, as I have said before in speak- 
ing of the work of the first Territorial Legisla- 
ture, was organized by thai body in 184!). and 
has been of incalculable value to the State. 
The officers of the society are a president, two 
vice-presidents, a treasurer and a secretary. 
and it is governed by an executive council of 
thirty-six members, which embraces the Gov- 
ernor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary. Au- 
ditor and Treasurer of State, and Attorney 
General as ex-officio members. The Stale 
makes an annual appropriation in aid of the 
society. The executive council meets once a 
month for the transaction of its business, at 
which meetings, and at its annual meetings, 
interesting papers and essays are delivered on 
historical subjects, which are preserved and, 
with other matter, are published in hand- 
somely bound volumes when sufficient material 
is accumulated. 

The society, in the manner prescribed ill its 
by-laws, may establish the following separate 
departments: 



Department 
of Minnesota. 
Department 
Department 
Department 
Department 
Department 
Chartology. 
Department 
Department 
Department 
Department 
Department 



of Annals and General History 

of Geology of Minnesota. 

of Zoology <>t' Minnesota. 

of Botany of Minnesota. 

of .Meteorology of Minnesota. 

of Northwestern Geography and 

of American History. 

of Oriental History. 

of European History. 

of Genealogy and Heraldry. 

of Ethnology and Anthropology. 



It has corresponding members all over the 
world and official connections with nearly nil 
the historical and learned societies of Europe 
and America, with which it interchanges publi- 
cations. It has a membership of 142 life and 87 
annual members. It may receive donations 
from any source. 

Its property, real and personal, is exempt 



from taxation of any kind. It has accumu- 
lated a splendid library of about sixty-three 
thousand volumes of all kinds of historical, 
genealogical, scientific and general knowledge, 
all of which are open and free to the public 
It also has a gallery of pictures of historical 
scenes in Minnesota, and portraits of men and 
women who have been prominent in, or who 
have contributed to the history or growth of 
Hie State, together with an extensive museum 
of Indian and other curiosities having some 
relation to Minnesota. One of its most valu- 
able attractions is a newspaper department in 
which are complete files of all newspapers 
which have been and are published in the 
State, except a very few unimportant ones. The 
number of our State papers, daily, weekly and 
monthly, received at the beginning of the year 
1890 was 421. These papers are all bound in 
substantial volumes for preservation for the 
use of future generations. On September 1, 
1899, the society had on the shelves of its tire- 
proof vault 4,250 of these volumes. Its rooms 
are in the capitol at St. Paul, and are entirely 
inadequate for its accommodation, but ample 
space has been allowed it in the new capitol 
now in the course of construction. 



STATE INSTITUTIONS MISCELLANEOUS 
IN THEIR CHARACTER. 

Besides the general State boards and asso- 
ciations having special reference to the leading 
products of (lie Slate, and those of a reforma- 
tory and educational character, there are many 
others, regulating business of various kinds 
among the inhabitants, all of which are im- 
portant in their special spheres, but to name 
them is all I can say about them in my limited 
space. Their number and the subjects which 
they regulate shows the care with which the 
Slate watches ever the welfare of its citizens. 
I present the following catalogue of the State 
departments: 

The Insurance Commission. 
The Public Examiner. 
The Dairy Food Commission. 
The Bureau of Labor. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



97 



The Board of Railroad and Warehouse Com- 
missioners. 

The Board of Game and Fish Commission- 
ers. 

The State Law Library. 

The State Department of Oil Inspection. 

The State Horticultural Society. 

The State Forestry Association. 

The Minnesota Dairyman's Association. 

The State Butter and Cheese Maker's Asso- 
ciation. 

The State Farmer's Institutes. 

The Red River Valley Drainage Commission. 

The State Drainage Commission. 

The Commission of Statistics. 

The State Board of Health and Vital Statis- 
tics. 

The State Board of Medical Examiners. 

The State Board of Pharmacy. 

The State Board of Dental Examiners. 

The State Board of Examiners in Law. 

The Bureau of Public Printing. 

The Minnesota Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty. 

The Geological and Natural History Survey. 

The State Board of Equalization. 

Surveyors of Logs and Lumber. 

The Board of Pardons. 

The State Board of Arbitration and Concil- 
iation. 

The State Board of Investment. 

The State Board of Examiners of Barbers. 

The State Board of Examiners of Practical 
Plumbing. 

The Horseshoers Board of Examiners. 

The Inspection of Steam Boilers. 

It is difficult to conceive of any other subject 
over which the State could assume jurisdiction, 
and the great number which are embraced al- 
ready within its supervision, would lead one 
who is not in touch with our State administra- 
tion to believe that State paternalism dom- 
inated the business industries of the people; 
but nothing is further from the truth, and no 
State in the Union is freer from governmental 
interference in the ordinary channels of in- 
dustry than Minnesota. 



STATE FINANCES. 



ways been in excellent condition. When the 
receipts of an individual or a State exceed ex- 
penditures the situation is both satisfactory 
and safe. At the last report up to July 31, 
1S9S, the receipts of the State from all sources 
were $5,429,240.32, and the expenditures were 
$5,208,942.05, leaving a balance on the right 
side of the ledger of $220,29S.27. To the re- 
ceipts must be added the balance in the treas- 
ury at the beginning of the year, of $2,054,- 
314.26, which left in the treasury on July 31, 
1898, the large sum of $2,184,612.53. 

The original indebtedness arising from the 
adjustment of the State railroad bonds was 
$1,659,000.00; other bonds, $300,000.00. This 
indebtedness has been reduced by payments to 
the sum of $1,475,647.22, on July 31, 1898, the 
date of the last report. If this debt had ma- 
tured, it could at once be paid by the funds on 
hand, leaving the State entirely free from all 
indebtedness. 

The taxable property of the State by last as- 
sessment in 1897, including real and personal 
property, was $570,598,813. 



Since the settlement of the debt created by 
the old railroad bonds that I have heretofore 
mentioned, the finances of the State have al- 



THE MONETARY AND BUSINESS 
FLURRY OF 1873 AND PANIC OF 1893. 

It has been customary in the United States 
to expect a disturbance in monetary and busi- 
ness affairs about once in every twenty years, 
and the expectation has not been disappointed 
since the panic of 18.">7. I have described the 
effect of the panic of 1857 on the Territory and 
State of Minnesota and the difficulties of re- 
cuperating from the shock. The next similar 
event was not due until 1877, but there is al- 
ways some special disaster to precipitate such 
occurrences. In 1S57 it was the failure of the 
Ohio Life and Trust Company, and in 1S73 it 
was the failure of Jay Cooke & Company, of 
Philadelphia. This house had been very prom- 
inent in placing the bonds of the Northern Pa- 
cific Railroad company, and in the construc- 
tion of the road, and was relied upon by many 
classes of people to invest their money for 
them, and when their failure was announced 
its effect in the East was disastrous, but here 



9 8 



niSTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



in Minnesota it only affected us in a secondary 
or indirect way, in stopping railroad building 
and creating general alarm in business circles. 
We had been diligently at work for sixteen 
years endeavoring to recuperate from the dis- 
aster of 1857 and had, to a great extent, suc- 
ceeded. Real estate had partially revived, but 
had not reached the boom feature, and the 
Slate was on a sound financial basis. Fortu- 
nately we bad not recovered sufficiently to be- 
come investors in railroad securities to any 
great extent, and land speculation bad not 
reached its usual twenty years mark. We had, 
also, on hand a local affliction in the presence 
of grasshoppers, so that, although it disturbed 
business generally, it did not succeed in pro- 
ducing bankruptcy, and we soon shook it off. 

This periodical financial disturbance has been 
attributed to various causes. From the regular- 
ity of its appearance, it must be the result of 
some impelling force of a generally similar 
character. My opinion is that the period of 
twenty years being the average time of man's 
business life, the actors of the second period 
have not the benefit of the experience gained by 
those of the previous one, and they repeat the 
same errors that produced the former disasters; 
but be that as it may, when the period extending 
from 1873 to 1893 had passed the same result 
had occurred, and with quite as much force as 
any of its predecessors. Land speculation had 
reached the point of absolute insanity. Every- 
body thought he could become rich if he only 
bought. Values already ridiculously expanded 
continued to increase with every sale. Anyone 
who had money enough to pay down a small 
amount as earnest, and intelligence enough to 
sign a note and mortgage for the balance of 
the purchase price, became purchasers to the 
limit of their credit. When a party whose 
credit was questioned needed an endorser, he 
found many requiring the same assistance who 
were ready to swap endorsements with him. 
Everyone became deeply in debt. The country 
was Hooded with paper, which was secured on 
the impossibility of values continuing. The 
banks became loaded with alleged securities 
and when the bubble was strained to the 
bursting point and some one of supposed finan- 



cial soundness was compelled to succumb to 
the pressure, the veil was lifted which opened 
the eyes of the community and produced a rush 
for safety, which induced and was necessarily 
followed by a general collapse. In 1S88 and 
issn banks suspended, money disappeared, and 
in 1893, in the expressive language of the West, 
everybody who was in debt, and all stockhold- 
ers and depositors in defunct banks "wenl 
broke." Had the cities of St. Paul and Minne- 
apolis been captured byan enemyand a ransom 
of ten million dollars been demanded for each, 
paid and carried away, the consequences upon 
business would not have been worse. It was 
much the same in all the large cities of the 
State, as land speculation was more active 
there than in the rural districts, and no mat- 
ter what may happen some value always re- 
mains to farm lands, while under such a col- 
lapse as that of 1893 the greater part of city 
property becomes utterly valueless for the 
present, and much of it forever. 

There was, however, a great difference be- 
tween the consequences of 189.". and the pre- 
vious disasters of 1857 and 1873. Although the 
disturbance was great, we were better pre- 
pared to meet it. Population had increased 
immensely. The area of civilization and pro- 
duction had kept pace with immigration. 
Manufactures of many kinds had been intro- 
duced, and although we w r ere seriously 
wounded, our hopes of recovery had solid 
grounds to rest upon and we were not dis- 
mayed. The only remedy in such cases — indus- 
try and economy — were applied, through ne- 
cessity if not from choice, and recovery has 
been slowly progressing up to the present time 
—1899 — when we may be classed as convales- 
cent. 

Will, this experience serve to prevent a re- 
currence of the follies of the past? Most as- 
suredly not. Those who have reaped wisdom 
will have surrendered the speculative arena to 
others before the financial cycle rolls around, 
and history will repeat itself, notwithstanding 
the State never had a better future outlook 
than at present. It does not follow that the 
panic due about 1913 will be caused by over- 
speculation in real estate. It is more likely 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



99 



to be produced by the excessive and fraudulent 
capitalization of all sorts of corporations called 
trusts, which will, of course, succumb to the 
first serious blow. 

With the exception of the events I have nar- 
rated, including the financial troubles of 1ST:', 
and 1893, nothing of special importance to the 
State has happened, except a few occurrences 
of minor moment. 



MINOR HAPPENINGS. 

September 5, 1878, President Haves made a 
short visit to the Stale, and delivered an ad- 
dress at the State agricultural fair. 

On the 7th of September, 1S70, an organized 
gang of bandits which had been terrorizing the 
State of Missouri and surrounding States witli 
impunity, entered this State and attacked a 
bank in the town of Northfield, in Rice county, 
with the intent of looting it. The cashier, Mr. 
Haywood, resisted, and they shot him dead. 
The people of the town hearing of the raid, 
turned out and opened fire on the robbers, who 
fled, with the loss of one killed. In their flight 
they killed a Swede before they got out of the 
town. The people of the counties through 
which their flight led them turned out, and 
before any of them passed the border of the 
State two more of them were killed and three 
captured. Two escaped. The captured were 
three brothers named Younger, and those who 
escaped were supposed to be the notorious 
James brothers of Missouri. The three Young- 
er brothers pleaded guilty to a charge of mur- 
der, and, on account of a peculiarity in the law 
that only allowed the death sentence t<> be im- 
posed by a jury, they were all sentenced to 
imprisonment for life; one of them has since 
died, and the other two remain in prison. 

The manner in which this raid was handled 
by our citizens was of immense value to the 
State, as it proved a warning to all such des- 
peradoes that Minnesota was a bad field for 
their operations, and we have had no more 
trouble from that class of offenders. 

In 1877 the Constitution was amended by 



providing for biennial instead of annual ses- 
sions of the Legislature. 

On May 2. 1878, a very singular and disas- 
trous event took place at Minneapolis. Three 
large flouring mills were blown up by a dust 
explosion and eighteen men killed. It was in- 
explicable for a time, but it was afterwards 
discovered that such explosions had occurred 
before, and prompt measures were taken Id 
prevent a repetition of the trouble. 

On the 15th of November, 1880, a portion 
of the large insane asylum at St. Peter was 
destroyed by fire, and eighteen of the inmates 
were burned and others died of injuries re- 
ceived. The pecuniary loss amounted to $150,- 
000. 

On March 1, 1881. the old capitol burned 
while the Legislature was in session. That 
body moved their sittings to the St. Paul Mar- 
ket House, which had just been finished, where 
they remained until the present capitol build- 
ing was erected upon the site of the one 
destroyed. 

On the 25th of January, 1884, the State 
prison at Stillwater was partially burned. 

September 14, 1886, St. ('loud and Sauk Rap- 
ids were struck by a cyclone. Scores of build- 
ings were destroyed and about seventy of the 
inhabitants killed. 

In the year 1889 the Australian system of 
voting at elections was introduced in cities of 
ten thousand inhabitants and over, and in 
1892 the system was made general throughout 
the State. 

On the 7th of April, 1893, the Legislature 
passed an act for the building of a new State 
capitol in the city of St. Paul, and appointed 
commissioners to carry out the object. They 
selected an eligible and conspicuous site be- 
tween University avenue, Cedar and Wabasha 
streets, near the head of Wabasha. They 
adopted for the materials which were to enter 
into it, granite for the lower and Georgia 
white marble for the upper stories. The whole 
cost was not to exceed $2,000,000. The corner 
stone of the building was laid July 27, 1898, 
with appropriate and very imposing ceremo- 
nies in the presence of an immense throng of 
citizens from all parts of the State. Senator 



Left. 



IOO 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



Davis delivered the oration and ex-Governor 
Alexander Ramsey laid the corner si one. The 
building has reached the third story, and will 
be a very beautiful and serviceable structure. 

On September 1, 1894, there was a mosi \ 
tensive and disastrous tire in Pine county. 
Four hundred square miles of territory were 
burned over by the forest fire; the towns of 
Hinckley and Sandstone were totally de 
stroyed, and four hundred people burned. The 
money loss was estimated at $1,000,000. This 
disaster was exactly what was needed lo 
awaken the people of the State to the necessity 
of providing means for the prevention of 
forest and prairie tires, and the preservation of 
our forests. Shortly after the Hinckley lire a 
State convention was held at the Commercial 
Club in St. Paul, to devise legislation to accom- 
plish this desirable end. which resulted in the 
passage of an act at the session of the Legisla- 
ture in 1895 entitled, "An act for the preserva- 
tion of forests of this State, and for the pre- 
vention and suppression of finest and prairie 
fires." Under this act the State Auditor was 
made the Forest Commissioner of the Stair, 
with authority to appoint a Chief Fire War- 
den. The supervisors of towns, mayors of cities 
and presidents of village councils were made 
fire wardens of their respective local jurisdic- 
tions, and the machinery for the prevention 
of fires was put in motion that is of immense 
value to the State. The Forest Commissioner 
appointed Gen. C. C. Andrews Chief Fire War- 
den, one of the best equipped men in the State 
for the position, and no serious trouble 1ms 
since occurred in the way of fires. 

On the 9th of February, 1887, the Minnesota 
Historical Society passed a resolution declar- 
ing that the pretenses made by <'a]ii. Willard 
Glazier, to having been the discoverer of the 
source of the Mississippi river, were false, and 
very little has been heard from him since. 

On the 10th of October, 1887, President 
Cleveland visited the State and made a short 
stay. 

This enumeration of passing events looks a 
little like a catalogue of disasters (except the 
building of the new capitol and the visit of 
Presidents Haves and Cleveland), but it must be 



remembered that Minnesota is such an empire 
in itself that such happenings scarcely pro- 
duce a ripple on the surface of its steady and 
continuous progress. It is because these events 
can he particularized and described that they 
assume proportions beyond their real impor- 
tance; but when compared with the colossal 
advances made by the State during the period 
covering them, they dwindle into mere points 
of educational experience, to be guarded 
against in the future. While the many bless 
ings showered upon the State, consisting of 
the health and wealth imparting sunshine, the 
refreshing and fructifying rains and dews of 
heaven, which, like the smiles of providence, 
and the life-sustaining air that surrounds us, 
are too intangible and indefinable for more 
I ha ii thankful recognition: our tribulations 
were really blessings in disguise. The bold 
invasion of the robbers proved our courage; 
the storms and fires proved our generosity to 
the distressed, and taught us lessons in the 
wisdom of prevention. Minnesota has as much 
to be thankful for and as little to regret as any 
State in the West, and our troubles only prove 
that we have a very robust vitality, difficult to 
permanently impair. 



THE WAR WITH SPAIN. 

For many years there has been a growing 
sentiment in the United States that Spain was 
governing Cuba and her other West Indian 
colonies in an oppressive and unjust manner, 
and the desire to interfere in behalf of the 
Cuban people received a good deal of encour- 
agement, and its unrestrained expression suc- 
ceeded in creating very strained relations be- 
tween Spain and the United States. II is a 
well known fact that the Spanish people from 
the north line of Mexico to Cape Horn, as well 
as the inhabitants of the Spanish Islands, hale 
the Americans most heartily. Why, I do nol 
know, except that our social, governmental 
and religious habits, customs and beliefs are 
radically different from their own — but that 
such is the case no one doubts who knows these 
people. In 1897 some effort at conciliation 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



IOI 



was made, and Spain sent one of her warships 
to New York on a friendly visit, but she did 
not stay long, and got away as soon as she 
decently could. The United Stales sent the 
battleship Maine to Havana on the same 
friendly mission, where she was officially con- 
veyed to her anchorage. She had been there 
but a short time when she was blown up, on 
February 15, 1898, and two hundred and sixty 
American seamen murdered. There was an 
official investigation to determine the cause of 
the explosion, but it found no solution of the 
disaster. Various theories were advanced of 
internal spontaneous explosion, but no one 
was misled. The general sentiment of Amer- 
icans was, that the Spanish in Cuba deliber- 
ately exploded a submarine torpedo under her 
to accomplish the result that followed. Pre- 
vious to this cowardly act there was much 
difference of opinion among the people of all 
sections of the country as to the propriety of 
declaring war against Spain, but public senti- 
ment was at once unified in favor of war on 
the announcement of this outrage. On the 25th 
of April, 1898, Congress passed an act declar- 
ing that war against Spain had existed since 
the 21st of the same mouth. A requisition wis 
made on Minnesota for its quota of troops im- 
mediately after war was declared, and late in 
the afternoon of the 28th of April the Governor 
issued an order to the Adjutant General to 
assemble the State troops at St. Paul. The 
Adjutant General, on the 29th, issued the fol- 
lowing order by telegraph to the different com- 
mands: 

"The First, Second and Third regiments of 
infantry are hereby ordered to report at St. 
Paul on Friday morning, April 29, L898, not 
later than eleven o'clock, witli one day's cooked 
rations in their haversacks." 

The order was promptly obeyed and all the 
field staff and company officers, with their coin 
mands, reported before the time appointed, 
and on the afternoon of that day went into 
camp at the State fair grounds, which was 
named Camp Ramsey. Such promptness on 
the part of the State militia was remarkable, 
luil it will be seen that they had been prepared 



for the order of the Adjutant General before 
its final issue, who had anticipated the dec- 
laration of war. 

On April 18th he had issued the following 
order: 



••Thi' commanding office 
companies, and artillery b 
the National Guard, will 
steps to recruit their comm 
dred men each. All recru 
mum peace footing el' sev< 
carried upon the muster ro 
cruits, to be discharged in 

are not needed for field ser 



rs of the infantry 
atteries, composing 
immediately take 
ands up to one hun- 
ts above the maxi- 
Tity-six men will be 
11 as provisional re- 
case their services 
vice." 



On the 25th of April the Adjutant General 
issued the following order: 

"In obedience to orders this day received 
from the Honorable Secretary of War, calling 
upon the State of Minnesota for three regi- 
ments of infantry as volunteers of the United 
States to serve two years or less, and as the 
three National Guard regiments have signified 
their desire of entering the service of the 
United States as volunteers, the First, Second 
and Third regiments of infantry of the Na- 
tional Guard of the State of Minnesota will im- 
mediately make preparations to report to these 
headquarters upon receipt of telegraphic or- 
ders which will be issued later." 

This commendable action on the part of our 
military authorities resulted in the Minnesota 
troops being the first to be mustered into the 
service of the United States in the war with 
Spain, thus repeating the proud distinction 
gained by the State in ISlil. when Minnesota 
was the first Stale to oiler troops for the de- 
fense of the Union in the Civil War. It is a 
curious, as well as interesting coincidence, th it 
the First Minnesota regiment for the Civil War 
was mustered in on April 29, 1861, and the first 
three regimen Is for the Spanish War were 
mobilized al St. Paul on April 29, 189S. 

The mustering in of the three regiments was 
completed on the 8th of May. 1S9S, and they 
were designated as the Twelfth, Thirteenth 
and Fourteenth Regiments of Infantry, Minne- 
sota Volunteers. This classification was made 
because the State had furnished eleven full 
regiments of infantry for (he Civil War, and it 
was decided to number them consecutively. 



t02 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



The Twelfth and Fourteenth left Camp Ram 
sey on the 16th of May for Camp George H. 
Thomas, in Georgia, and the Thirteenth de- 
parted for San Francisco on I In- same day. The 
Thirteenth was afterwards ordered to Manila. 
The others did not leave the country and were 
subsequently mustered out. The Thirteenth 
did gallant service in the Philippines in many 
battles, and has just been mustered out in San 
Francisco, and on October 12, 1899, returned 
to our Stale. A warm welcome was given 
them in Minnesota, where they will always be 
regarded with the same pride and affection 
formerly bestowed upon the old First, of 
patriotic memory. 

President McKinley and several of his cabi- 
net arrived in St. Paul at the same time of the 
arrival of the Thirteenth, and assisted in wel- 
coming them to their homes. 

There was a second call foe troops, under 
which the Fifteenth Regiment was mustered 
in. but was not called upon for active duty 
of any kind. It is to be hoped that the war 
may be ended without the need of more Volun- 
teers from Minnesota, bill should another call 
lie made on our people, no doubt can be enter- 
tained of their prompt response. Having given 
I he part taken in the war againsi Spain and 
the Philippines by Minnesota, ils further pros 
ecution against the latter becomes purely a 
Federal mailer, unless we shall be called into 
it in the future. 

When Spain sued for peace, soon after the 
destruction of her second Heel off Santiago 
de Cuba, a commission to negotiate a treaty of 
peace with her was appointed by the Presi- 
dent, and Minnesota was honored by the selec- 
lioii of its Senior Senator, Hon. Cushman K. 
Davis, chairman of the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Relations, as one of ils members. The 
commission consisted of William R. Day, Sec- 
retary of State of the United States; Cushman 
K. Davis, of Minnesota: William P. Five, of 
Maine; George Gray, of Delaware, and White- 
law Reid, of New York. Tt met at Paris and 
concluded its labors the 101 h day of December, 
1898, when Iho treaty was signed by the com- 
missioners of both contracting parties. II is 
hardly necessary to add thai the influence ex- 



erted on the result by the distinguished and 
learned representative from Minnesota was 
conl rolling. 



THE INDIAN BATTLE OF LEECH LAKE. 

Early in October, 1898, there was an Indian 
battle fought at Leech Lake, in this State, the 
magnitude of the result of which gives it a 
place in the history of Minnesota, although it 
was strictly a matter of United States cogni- 
zance and jurisdiction. In Cass county is lo- 
cated a Chippewa Indian reservation, and, like 
all other Indian reservations, there are within 
ils liniils turbulent people, both white and red. 
There is a large island out in Leech lake called 
Pear island, which is inhabited by the Indians. 
On October 1, 1807, one Indian shot another 
on this island. A prominent member of the 
tribe, named Pug-on-a-ke-shig, was present and 
witnessed the shooting. An indictment was 
found in the United States District Court 
against the Indian who did the shooting, but 
before any trial could be had the matter was 
sell led among the Indians in their own way, 
and they thought that was the last of it. A 
subpoena was issued for Pug-on-a-ke-shig, and 
a deputy marshal served it. He disregarded 
I he subpoena. An attachment was then issued 
lo arrest him and bring him into court, and a 
deputy United States marshal tried to serve it. 
lie was resisted by the Indian and his friends 
fin three different occasions, and once when 
the Indian was arrested he was rescued from 
the custody of the marshal. Warrants were 
I hen issued for the arrest of twenty-one of the 
rescuers. This was in the latter part of Au- 
gust, 1808. Troops were asked for to aid the 
marshal in making his arrests, and a lieuten- 
ant and twenty men were sent from Fori 
Snel ling for that purpose. This was simply a 
repetition of the many mistakes made by the 
military authorities in such matters. If troops 
were necessary for any purpose, twenty men 
were simply useless, and worse than none, and 
when the time came for I he application of mili- 
tary force would, of course, have been annihi- 
lated. The United States marshal with a squad 



HISTORY OP MINNESOTA. 



10 3 



of deputies accompanied the hoops. It soon 
became apparent that there would be trouble 
before the Indians could be brought to terms, 
and General Bacon, the officer in command of 
the Department of Dakota, with headquarters 
at St. Paul, ordered Major Wilkinson, of Com- 
pany E,of the Third Regiment of United Stales 
Infantry, stationed at Fort Snelling, with his 
company of eighty men, to the scene of the 
trouble. General Bacon accompanied these 
troops as far as Walker, on the west bank of 
Leech lake, more in the capacity of an observer 
of events and to gain proper knowledge of the 
situation than as part of I lie forces. On the 
5th of October, 189S, the whole force left Walk- 
er in boats for a place on the east bank of the 
lalcc, called Sugar Point, where there was a 
clearing of several acres, and a log house oc- 
cupied by Pug-on-a-ke-shig. They were accom- 
panied by R. T. O'Connor, the United States 
marshal of Minnesota, and several of his depu- 
ties, among whom was Col. Timothy J. Shee- 
han, who knew the Indians who were subject 
to arrest. This officer was the same man who, 
as Lieutenant Sheehan, had so successfully 
commanded the forces at Fort Ridgely during 
the Indian War of 18G2, since when he had 
fought his way through the Civil War with 
distinction. When the command landed, only 
a few squaws and Indians were visible. The 
deputy marshals landed and, with the inter 
prefers, went at once to the house, and while 
there discovered an Indian whom Colonel 
Sheehan recognized as one for whom a warrant 
was out, and immediately attempted to aires! 
and handcuff him. The Indian resisted vigor- 
ously, and it was only with the aid of three or 
four soldiers that they succeeded in arresting 
him. He was put on board of the boat. The 
whole force then skirmished through the tim- 
ber in search of Indians, but found none, and 
about noon returned to the clearing and were 
ordered to stack arms preparatory to getting 
dinner. They had scouted the surrounding 
country and had seen no Indians or signs of 
Indians, and did not believe there were any in 
the vicinity; when in fact the Indians had care- 
fully watched their every movement, and were 
dose to their trail, waiting for the most advan- 



tageous moment to strike. It was (he same 
tactics which the Indians have so often adopted 
with much success in their warfare with (lie 
whites. While stacking arms a new recruit 
allowed his gun to fall to the ground, and it 
was discharged accidentally. The Indians, 
who were silently awaiting their opportunity, 
supposing it was the signal of attack, opened 
tire on the troops, and a vicious battle began. 
The soldiers seized their arms and returned the 
fire as best they could, directing it at the points 
whence came the shots from the invisible en- 
emy concealed in the dense thicket. The bat- 
tle raged for several hours. General Bacon, 
with a gun in his hands, was everywhere, en 
couraging the men. Major Wilkinson, as cool 
as if lie had been in a drawing room, cheered 
his men on, but was thrice wounded, the last 
hit proving fatal. Colonel Sheehan instinct- 
ively entered the fight, and took charge of the 
right wing of the line, charging the enemy with 
a few followers and keeping up a rapid fire. 
The Colonel was hit three times, two bullets 
passing through his clothes, grazing the skin, 
without serious injury, and one cutting a pain- 
ful, hut not dangerous wound across his stom- 
ach. The result of the fight was six killed and 
nine wounded on the part of the troops. One 
of the- Indian police was also killed and seven 
citizens wounded, some seriously. No estimate 
has ever been satisfactorily obtained of the 
loss of the enemy. The most reliable account 
of the number of his forces engaged is, from 
nineteen to thirty, and if I should venture an 
estimate of his losses, based upon my expe- 
rience of his ability to select a vantage ground, 
and take care of himself, I would put it at 
practically nothing. 

The killed and wounded were brought to 
Port Snelling, the killed buried with military 
honors and the wounded properly cared for. 
This event adds one more to the long list of 
fatal errors committed by our military forces 
in dealing with the Indians of the Northwest. 
They should never be attacked without a force 
sufficient to demonstrate I he superiority of the 
whites in all cases and under all circumstances. 
Many a valuable life has been thus unneces 
sarily lost. 



u>4 



niSTOKY OF MINNESOTA. 



Major Wilkinson, who lost his life in this 
encounter, was a man who had earned an en- 
viable record in the army, and was much be- 
loved by his many friends and acquaintances 
in Minnesota. 

The principal Indian engaged in this fight 
lias been called in every newspaper and other 
report of it "Bug-a-ma-ge-shig," but I have suc- 
ceeded in obtaining his real name from tin- 
highest authority. The name — Pug-on-a-ke- 
shig — is the Chippewa for Hole-in-the-day. 

Shortly after the return of the troops to 
Fort Snelling the settlers about Cass and 
Leech lakes became uneasy, and deluged the 
Governor with telegrams for protection. The 
National Guard or State Troops had nearly all 
been mustered into the United States service 
for duty in the war with Spain, but the Four- 
teenth Regiment was in St. Faul awaiting mus- 
ter out, and the Governor telegraphed to the 
War Department at Washington to send 
enough of them to the front to quiet the fears 
of the settlers. This was declined, and the 
Governor at once ordered out two batteries of 
artillery, all the State troops that were avail- 
able, and sent them to the scene of the troubles, 
and then sent his celebrated telegram to the 
War Department, which may be called the 
Minnesota Declaration of Independence. It 
ran as follows: 

"October S, 1898. 

11. 0. Corbin, 

Adjutant General, 

Washington, D. C. 

Xo one claims that reinforcements are 
needed at Walker. I have not been asked for 
assistance from that quarter. Although I do 
not think General Bacon has won the victory 
he claims, other people do not say so. (Sic.) 
The Indians claim to have won, and that is my 
opinion. The people all along the Fosston 
branch of railroad are very much alarmed and 
asking for protection, which I have asked of 
the War Department. The soldiers are here 
and ready and willing to go. but as you have 
revoked your order of yesterday, you can do 
what you like with your soldiers. The State 
of Minnesota will try to get along without any 
assistance from the War Department in the 
future. I». M. ('lough, Governor." 



Rumor says that the telegram which was 
forwarded is very much modified from that 
originally dictated by the Governor. 

The United States Government concluded to 
withdraw its refusal and send troops to the 
front, and several companies of the Fourteenth 
were dispatched to the line of the Fosston 
Branch railroad and distributed along the line 
of that road. 

In the meantime the Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs had arrived at Walker, and was nego- 
tiating with the Indians, and when it became 
known that matters were arranged to the satis- 
faction of the government and the Indians, and 
no outbreak was expected, the soldiers were all 
withdrawn, and the incident, so far as military 
operations were concerned, was closed. There 
were some surrenders of the Indians to the 
officers of the court, but nothing further of eon- 
sequence occurred. 



POPULATION. 



One of the most interesting features of a 
new country is the character and the nativity 
of its population. The old frontiersman who 
has watched the growth of new States, and 
fully comprehended the effect produced upon 
their civilization and character, by the nativity 
of their immigrants, is the only person compe- 
tent to judge of the influences exerted in this 
line. It is a well known fact that the immigra- 
tion from Europe into America is generally 
governed by climatic influences. These people 
usually follow the line of latitude to which 
they have been accustomed. The Norseman 
from Russia, Sweden. Germany and Norway 
comes to the extreme Northwestern States, 
while the emigrant from southern Europe 
seeks the more southern latitudes. Of course, 
these are very general comments, and only re- 
late to immigration in its usual directions, as 
the people from all parts of Europe are found 
in all parts of America. It is generally be- 
lieved that the immigrants from Northern Eu- 
rope are more desirable than those from fur- 
ther south, and a presentation of the status of 
our population in point of nativity will afford 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



I05 



a basis from which to judge of their general 
attributes for good or bad. There is no nation 
on earth that has not sent us some representa- 
tive. The following table, while it will prove 
that we have a most heterogeneous, polyglot 
population, will also prove that we possess 
vast powers of assimilation, as we are about 
as harmonious a people as ran be found in all 
(lie Union. Our Governor is a Swede, one of 
our United States Senators is a Norwegian, 
and our other State officers are pretty gener- 
ally distributed among the various nationali- 
ties. Of course, in the minor political subdi- 
visions, such as counties, cities and towns, the 
office holding is generally governed by the 
same considerations. 

I give the various countries from which our 
population is drawn, with the numbers from 
each country, and the number of native born 
and foreign born, which, aggregated, consti- 
tute our entire population. These figures are 
taken from the State census of 1895: 

England 12,041 

Scotland 5,344 

Germany 133,768 

Denmark 16,143 

Norwav 107,310 

Canada 40,231 

Poland 8,464 

Iceland 454 

Ireland 26,106 

Wales 1,246 

France 1,402 

Sweden n0.",4 

Russia 6.286 

Eohomia 10,327 

Finland 7,652 

All other countries 11,205 

Total native born 1.057,084 

Total foreign born 517,535 

Total population 1,674,619 

The total native born of our population is 
very largely composed of the descendants of 
foreign immigrants. These figures afford a 
large field for thought and future considera- 
tion when immigration problems are under 
legislative investigation. 

The census from which these figures are tak- 



en being five years old, I think it is safe to add 
a sufficient number of increase to bring our 
population up to two millions. The census of 
1000 will demonstrate whether or not my esti- 
mate is correct. 



THE STATE FLAG. 



Up to the year 1803 the State of Minnesota 
had no distinctive State flag. On April 4, 1803, 
an act was passed by the Legislature entitled, 
"An act providing for the adoption of a State 
flag." This act appointed, by name, a com- 
mission of six ladies to adopt a design for a 
State flag. Section two of the act provided that 
the design adopted should embody, as near as 
may be, the following facts: 

"There shall be a white ground with reverse 
side of blue. The center of the white ground 
shall be occupied by a design substantially em- 
bodying the form of the seal employed as the 
State seal of Minnesota at the time of its ad- 
mission into the Union. * * * * The said de- 
sign of the State seal shall be surrounded by 
appropriate representations of the moccasin 
flower indigenous to Minnesota, surrounding 
said central design, and appropriately ar- 
ranged on the said white ground shall be nine 
teen stars, emblematic of the fact that Minne- 
sota was the nineteenth State to be admitted 
into the Union, after its formation by the thir- 
teen original States. There shall also appear 
at the bottom of the flag in the white ground, 
so as to be plainly visible, the word Minne- 
sota." 

The commission prepared a very beautiful 
design for the flag, following closely the in- 
structions given by the Legislature, which was 
adopted, and is now the authorized flag of the 
State. The flag-staff is surmounted by a golden 
gopher, in harmony with the popular name 
given to our State. 

May it ever represent the principles of lib 
erty and justice, and never be lowered to an 
enemy. 

The original flag, artistically embroidered in 
silk, can be seen at the office of the Governor 
at the State Capitol. 



io6 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



TIIE OFFICIAL FLOWER OF THE STATE, 

AND THE METHOD OF ITS 

SELECTION. 

On the 20th of April, 1891, the Legislature 
of the State passed an act entitled "An act to 
provide for the collection, arrangement and 
display of the products of the State of Minne- 
sota at the World's Columbian Exposition of 
one Thousand Eight Hundred and Ninety- 
three, and to make an appropriation therefor." 

This act created a commission of six citizens 
of the State, to be appointed by the Governor, 
and called "The Board of World's Fair Man- 
agers of Minnesota." 

The women of the State determined that 
(here should be an opportunity for them to par- 
ticipate in the exposition on the part of Minne- 
sota, and a convention of delegates from each 
county of the State was called and held at the 
People's church, in St. Paul, on February 14. 
1892. This convention elected one woman del 
egate and one alternate from each of the seven 
Congressional districts of the State. There 
were also two national lady managers from 
Minnesota, nominated by the two national rep- 
resentatives from Minnesota and appointed by 
the President of the United States, who were 
added to the seven delegates so chosen, and 
the whole was called "The Woman's Auxiliary 
to the State Commission." The women so 
chosen took charge of all the matters properly 
pertaining to the Women's Department of the 
Exposition. 

At one of the meetings of the ladies, held in 
St. Paul, the question of the selection of an 
official flower for the Slate was presented, and 
the sent intent generally prevailed that it 
should at once he decided by the assemblage; 
but Mrs. L. P. Hunt, the delegate from Man 
kato, in the Second Congressional District, 
wisely suggested that the selection should lie 
made by all the ladies of the State, and that 
they should be given an opportunity to vole 
upon the proposition. This suggestion was ap- 
proved, and the following plan was adopted: 
Mrs. Hunt was authorized to appoint a com- 
mittee, of which she was to be chairman, to 
select a list of flowers to be voted on. Accord- 



ingly, she appointed a sub-committee who were 
to consult the State Botanist, Mr. Conway 
MacMillan, who was to name a number of Min- 
nesota flowers, from which the ladies were to 
choose. He presented the following: 

Lady Slipper (Moccasin Flower, Cypripe- 
dium Spectabile.) 

Silky Aster. 

Indian Pink. 

Cone Flower (Brown-eyed Susan). 

Wild Rose. 

The plan was to send out printed tickets to 
all the women's organizations in the State with 
these names on them to be voted upon. This 
was done, with the result that the moccasin 
flower received an overwhelming majority, 
and has ever since been accepted as the official 
flower of the State. That the contest was a 
very spirited one can be judged from the fact 
that Mrs. Hunt sent out in her district at least 
ten thousand tickets with indications of her 
choice of the moccasin flower. She also main 
tained lengthy newspaper controversies with 
parties in Manitoba, who claimed the prior 
right of that province to the moccasin flower; 
all of whom she vanquished. 

The choice was a very wise and appropriate 
one. The flower itself is very beautiful, and 
peculiarly adapted to the purposes of artistic 
decoration. It has already been utilized in 
three instances of an official character with 
success and approval. The Minnesota State 
Building at the Columbian Exposition was 
beautifully decorated with it. It is prominent- 
ly incorporated into the State flag, and adorns 
I he medal conferred by the State upon the de- 
fenders of Foil Ridgely. 

The botanical name of the flower is Cypripe- 
dium, taken from Creek words, meaning I he 
shoe of Venus. It is popularly called lady's 
slipper, moccasin flower and Indian shoe. 

About twenty-five species of cypripedium 
are known belonging to the north temperate 
zone, and reaching south into Mexico and 
northern India. Six species occur in the 
Northern United Stales and Canada, east of 
the Rocky mountains, all of these being found 
in Minnesota, and about a dozen species occur 
on this continent. They are perennial herbs 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



107 



with irregular flowers, which grow singly or in 
small clusters, the colors of some of which are 
strikingly beautiful. The species adopted by 
the women of the State of Minnesota is the 
Oypripedium Spectabile, or the showy lady 
slipper. 

The ladies naturally desired that their 
choice should be ratified by the State Legisla- 
ture, and one of their number prepared a report 
of their doings in a petition to that body ask- 
ing its approval. Whoever drew the petition 
named the flower chosen by the ladies as "Oy- 
pripedium Calceolous," a species which does 
nut grow in Minnesota, but is purely of Euro- 
pean production. The petition was presented 
to the Senate on the 4th of February, 1803. 
The journal of the Senate shows the following 
record, which is found on page 167: 

"Mr. Dean asked the unanimous consent to 
present a petition from the Women's Auxiliary 
to the World's Fair relative to the adoption of 
a State flower and emblem, which was read. 

Mr. Dean offered the following concurrent 
resolution, and moved its adoption: 

Be it resolved by the Senate, the House of 
Representatives concurring, that the wild lady 
slipper or moccasin flower, Oypripedium Oal- 
ceolons, be. and the same is hereby designated 
and adopted as the State flower or emblem of 
the State of Minnesota, which was adopted." 

In the Legislative Manual of 1803 appears on 
page 60fi the following: "The State Flower. 
On April 4. 1893 (should be February), a peti- 
tion from the Women's Auxiliary to the 
World's Fair was presented to the Senate rela- 
tive to the adoption of a State flower. By 
resolution of the Senate, concurred in by the 
House (?), the Wild Lady Slipper or Moccasin 
Flower (Oypripedium) was designated as the 
State flower or floral emblem of the State of 
Minnesota." 

The word "Calceolous" means a little shoe 
or slipper, but, as I said before, the species so 
designated in botany is not indigenous to Min- 
nesota, and is purely a foreigner. As we have 
in the course of our growth assimilated so 
many foreigners successfully we will have no 
(rouble in swallowing this small shoe, espe- 
cially as the House did not concur in its reso- 



lution, and while the mistake will in no way 
militate against the progress or prosperity of 
Minnesota, it should be a warning to all com- 
mittees and Western Legislators to go slow 
when dealing with the dead languages. 

We now have the whole body of cypriped- 
iums to choose from, and may reject the 
calceolous. 

If the House of Representatives ever con- 
curred in the Senate resolution it left no trace 
of its action, either in its journal or published 
laws, that I have been able to find. 

Among the many valuable achievements of 
I lie Women's Auxiliary one deserves special 
mention. Mrs. H. F. Brown, one of the dele- 
gates at large, suggested a statue for the 
Woman's Building, to be the production of 
Minnesota's artistic conception and execution. 
The architect of the State Building had disal- 
lowed this feature, and there was no public 
fund to meet the expense, which would be con- 
siderable. The ladies, however, decided to 
procure the statue, and rely on private sub- 
scription to defray the cost. Mrs. L. P. Hunt 
thought that sufficient funds might be raised 
from the school children of the State, through 
a penny subscription. Enough was raised to 
secure a plaster cast of great beanty, repre- 
senting Hiawatha carrying Minnehaha across 
a stream in his arms, illustrating the lines in 
Longfellow's poem: 

"Over wide and rushing rivers 
In his arms he bore the maiden." 

This statue adorned the porch of the Minne- 
sota Building during the fair. It was designed 
and made by a very talented young Norwegian 
sculptor then residing in Minneapolis — the late 
Jakob Fjelde. It is proposed to cast the statue 
in bronze and place it in Minnehaha Park, 
Minneapolis, at some future day. 



ORIGIN OF THE NAME, GOPHER STATE. 

Most of the States in the Union have a pe- 
culiar name. New York is called the Empire 
State, Pennsylvania the Keystone State, etc. 



io8 



HISTORY OP MINNESOTA. 



As you come west 1 1 1 < ■> seem to have taken the 
names of animals. Michigan is called the Wol- 
verine Slate, Wisconsin the Badger State, and 
it is not at all singular that Minnesota should 
have been christened the Gopher State. These 
names never originate by any recognized au- 
thority. They arise from some event that sug- 
gests them, or from some important utterance 
that makes an impression on the public mind. 
In the very early days of the Territory, say as 
early as 1854 or L855, the question was dis 
cussed among the settlers as to what name 
should be adopted by Minnesota, and for a 
time it was called by some the Beaver Stave. 
That name seemed to have the greatest num- 
ber of advocates, but it was always met with 
the objection that the beaver, although quite 
numerous in some of our streams, was not suf- 
ficiently so to entitle him to characterize the 
Territory by giving it his name. While this 
debate was in progress the advocates of the 
beaver spoke of the Territory as the beaver 
Territory, but it never reached a point of uni- 
versal adoption. It was well known that the 
gopher abounded, and his name was introduced 
as a competitor with the beaver; but being a 
i-alher insignificant animal and his nature be- 
ing destructive, and in no way useful, hi' was 
objected to by many, as loo useless and undig- 
nified to become an emblem of the coming 
great State — for we all had. at that early day, 
full confidence that Minnesota was destined to 
be a great and prominent State. Nothing was 
ever settled on this subject until after the year 
1857. As I have before stated, in that year 
an attempt was made to amend the Consti- 
tution by allowing the Stale to issue bonds iti 
the sum of $5,000,000 loaid in the construction 
of the railroad which the United Stales had 
subsidized with land grants, and the campaign 
which involved this amendment was most bit 
terly fought. The opponents of the measure 
published a cartoon to bring the subject into 
ridicule, which was very generally circulated 
throughout the State, but failed to check the 
enthusiasm in favor of the proposition. This 
cartoon represented ten men in a line with 
heads bowed down with the weight of a bag 
of gold hung about their necks marked "$10.- 



(100." They were Supposed to represent the 

members of the Legislature who had been 
bribed to pass the act, and were called "pri- 
mary directors." On their backs was a rail 
road track, upon which was a train of cars 
drawn by nine gophers, the three gophers in 
I he lead proclaiming, ''We have no cash, but 
will give you our drafts." Attached to the 
real- of the train was a wheelbarrow with a 
barrel on ii marked "gin," followed by t he devil 
in great glee, with his thumb at his nose. In 
the train were the advocates of the lull, flying 
a flag bearing these words: "Gopher train; 
excursion train; members of extra session of 
Legislature free. We develop the resources of 
the country," and over this was a smaller flag 
with the words. "The $5,000,000 Loan Bill." 

In another part of the picture is a rostrum, 
from which a gopher is addressing the people 
with the legend, "I am right; Gorman is 
wrong." In the right hand corner of the car- 
toon is a round ball with a gopher in it. com 
ing rapidly down, with the legend, "A Hall 
come from Winona." This was a pun on the 
name of Mr. St. A. D. Balcombe from Winona. 
who was a strong advocate of the measure. 
And under the whole group was a dark pit, 
with the words, "A mine of corruption." 

The bill was passed and the State was sad- 
dled with a debt of $5,000,000, under which it 
staggered for over twenty years, and we never 
even go1 a gopher train out of it. 

This cartoon, coming just at the time when 
the name of the State was under consideration, 
fastened upon it the nickname of "Gopher," 
which it has ever since retained. The name 
is not at all inappropriate, as the animal litis 
always abounded in the State. In a work on 
the mammals of .Minnesota, by C. L. Herrick, 
1892, he n'ives the scientific name of our most 
common species of gopher, "Spermophilus 
Tridecemlineatus," or thirteen striped gopher, 
and says: "The species ranges from the Sas- 
kalchawan to Texas, and from Ohio to Utah. 
Minnesota is the peculiar home id' the typical 
form, and thus deserves the name of the 
Gopher State." 

Although the name originated in ridicule 
and contempt, it has not in any way handi- 



IIISTOKY OF MINNESOTA. 



109 



capped the Commonwealth, partly because very 
few people know its origin, but for the greater 
reason that it would take much more than a 
name to check its predestined progress. 



STATE PARKS. 

Itasca State Park. 

In a previous part of this work, under the 
head of "Lumber," I have referred to the fact 
that a great National park and forest reserve 
is in contemplation by the United States at the 
headwaters of the Mississippi, and also made 
reference to the Slab' park already established 
at that point. I will now relate whai lias been 
done by the State in this regard. In 1875 an 
official survey of the land in and about Lake 
Itasca was made by the Surveyor General of 
the United States for Minnesota which brought 
these lands under the operation of the United 
States laws, and part of them were entered. 
A portion of them went to the Northern Pa- 
cific railroad company under it s land grant. 
The swamp and school lands went to the Stale. 
and much to private individuals under the 
various methods of making title to government 
lands. 

On the 20th of April, 1891, the Legislature 
passed an act entitled "An act to establish 
and create a public park, to be known and des- 
ignated as the Itasca State Park, and author- 
izing the condemnation of lands for park 
purposes." This act set apart for park pur- 
poses 19,702 acres of land, and dedicates them 
to the perpetual use of the people. It places 
the same under the care and supervision of the 
State Auditor, as land commissioner. It pro- 
hibits the destruction of trees, or hunting with- 
in its limits. It provides for a commission to 
obtain title to such of the lands as belong to 
private individuals, either by purchase or con- 
demnation. 

On the 3d of August, 1892, the United States 
granted to the State all the unappropriated 
lands within the limits of the park upon this 
condition: 

"Provided the land hereby granted shall re- 



vert to the United States, together with all the 
improvements thereon, if at any time it shall 
cease to be exclusively used for a public State 
park, or if the State shall not pass a law or 
laws to protect the timber thereon." 
• The State, at the session of the Legislature 
in 1S93, accepted the grant, but as yet has 
made no provision for the extinguishment of 
the title of private "owners, of which there arc 
8,823 acres. This divided ownership of the 
lands within the limits of the park endangers 
the whole region by lumbering operations, and 
consequent forest fires after the timber is cut. 
Fires are not to be feared in natural forests 
until they are cut over. The acquisition of 
title to all these lands by the State should not 
be delayed any longer than is necessary to per- 
fect it, no matter at what cost. The State has 
already erected a house on the bank of Itasca 
lake, and has a resident commissioner in 
charge of the park. 

The effect of the law prohibiting hunting in 
the park has already greatly increased the 
numbers of animals and fowls that find in it 
a safe refuge. 

The extent of the park is seven miles long 
by five miles wide, and is covered with a dense 
forest of pine, oak, maple, basswood, aspen, 
balsam fir, cedar and spruce, which is nearly 
in a state of nature. It is much to be hoped 
that in the near future this park will be en- 
larged to many times its present size by addi- 
tional grants. 

Interstate Park: The Dalles of the St. Croix. 

One of the most, if not the most, beautiful 
and picturesque points in the Northwest is the 
Dalles of the St. Croix river. Here the State 
has acquired the title to about one hundred 
and fifty acres of land on the Minnesota side 
of the river, and dedicated it for park pur- 
poses. This was done under the authority of 
Chapter 109 of the Laws of 1895. The point on 
the Minnesota side is called Taylor's Falls, 
and on the Wisconsin side St. Croix Falls. Be- 
tween these two towns the St. Croix river 
rushes rapidly, forming a cataract of great 
beauty. The bluffs are precipitate and rocky, 



I K) 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



forming a narrow gorge through which the 
river plunges. The name of the river is French 
— "Sainte Croix," meaning the holy cross — and 
the name of this particular point, the "Dalles," 
was given on account of the curious formation 
of the rocky banks, which assume wonderful 
shapes. One, looking down stream, presents 
a perfect likeness of a man, and is called "The 
Old Man of the Dalles." Another curious rock 
formation is called the "Devil's Chair." There 
are many others equally interesting. It is gen- 
erally supposed that the word "Dalles" has 
the same meaning of the English word "Dell" 
or "Dale," signifying a narrow secluded vale 
or valley, but such is not the case as applied 
to this peculiar locality. The word "Dalles" 
is French, and means a slab, a flag or a flag- 
stone, and is appropriate to the peculiar char- 
acter of the general rock formation of the river 
banks at this point and vicinity. 

The State of Minnesota lias already done a 
good deal of work towards making it attract- 
ive, and it has become quite a resort for pleas 
ure seekers in the summer time. Wisconsin 
has acquired title to a larger tract on 
the east side of the river than is embraced in 
I lie Minnesota park on the west side, but as 
yet has not done much in the way of improve- 
ment. The two tracts are united by a graceful 
bridge which spans the river between them. 
The Minnesota park is under the charge of a 
Stale custodian, who cares for and protects it 
from despoilment. 



POLITICS. 



In writing the history of a State, no matter 
how short or limited such history may be, its 
politics seem to be an essential element of 
presentation, and on this assumption alone 1 
will say a very few words concerning that sub 
ject. I do not believe that the question of 
which political party has been dominant in 
the State has exerted any considerable influ- 
ence on its material prosperity. The great 
First Cause of its creation was so generous in 
his award of substantial blessings that it 
placed the State beyond the ability of man, or 
his politics, to seriously injure or impede its 



advance towards material success in any of the 
channels that promote greatness — soil, cli- 
mate, minerals, facilities for commerce and 
transportation, consisting of great rivers, lakes 
and harbors; all these combine to defy the 
destructive tendencies so often exerted by the 
ignorance and passions of man. It has resisted 
every folly of its people, and they have been 
ma n \ ; every onslaught of its savage inhabi- 
tants — and they have been more formidable 
than those experienced by any other State — 
and even the cataclysms with which it has oc- 
casionally been visited arising from natural 
causes. The fact is, Minnesota is so rock- 
rooted in all the elements of material great- 
ness that it must advance, regardless of all 
known obstructions. 

When the Territory was organized, in 1840, 
Gen. Zachary Taylor, a Whig, was the Presi- 
dent of the United States, and he appointed 
Alexander Ramsey, also a Whig, as Governor, 
to set its political machinery in motion. He re- 
mained in office until the National administra- 
tion changed in 1853. and Franklin Pierce, a 
Democrat, was chosen President. lie appointed 
lii'ii. Willis A. Gorman, a Democrat, as Gov- 
ernor, to succeed Governor Ramsey. On the 
till of March, 1857, .lames Buchanan, a 
Democrat, succeeded Presidenl Pierce, and 
appointed Samuel Medarv, a Democrat, as Gov- 
ernor of Minnesota. He held this position until 
I lie Slate was admitted into the Union, in May, 
L858, when Henry H. Sibley, a Democrat, was 
elected Governor for the term of two years, 
anil served it out. 

< >n the admission of the State into the 
Union, two Democratic United States Senators 
were elected, Henry M. Rice and Gen. James 
Shields. General Shields served from May 12, 
1858, to March 3, 1859, and Mr. Rice from May 
12, 1858, to March 3, 1863, he having drawn 
the long term. The State also elected three 
members of the United Stales House of Rep 
resentatives all Democrats, James M. Cava- 
naugh, W. W. Phelps and George L. Becker; 
but it was determined thai we were only en- 
titled to two, and Mr. Phelps and Mr. Cava 
naugh were admitted to seats. With this Stale 
and Federal representation we entered upon 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



IT I 



our political career. At the nexl election for 
Governor, in the fall of IS")!). Alexander Rani 
sey, Republican, was chosen, and there lias 
never been a Governor of the State of any but 
Republican polities since, until John Lind was 
elected in the fall of 1898. Mr. Lind was 
chosen as a Democrat with the aid of other 
political organizations, which united with the 
Democracy. Mr. Lind now tills the office of 
Governor. It will be seen that for thirty-nine 
years the State was wholly in the hands 
of the Republicans. During the interval be- 
tween the administration of Governor Sibley 
and Governor Lind the State had twelve Gov- 
ernors, all Republican. 

In its Federal representation, however, the 
Democrats have fared a trifle better. The 
growth of population has increased our mem- 
bership in the Federal House of Representa- 
tives to seven, and occasionally a Democrat, 
or member of some other party, has succeeded 
in breaking into Congress. 

From the First District W. H. Harris, Dem- 
ocrat, was elected in 1890. 

From the Third District Eugene M. Wilson, 
Democrat, was elected in 1868; Henry Poeler, 
Democrat, in 1878; Johu L. .McDonald, Demo 
crat, in 1886, and 0. M. Hall, Democrat, in 18110, 
and again in 1892. 

From the Fourth District Edmund Rice, 
Democrat, was elected in 1886, and James N. 
Castle, Dei -rat, in 1890. 

From the Sixth District M. R. Baldwin, Dem- 
ocrat, was elected in 1892. 

From the Fifth District Kit lie Halverson, 
Alliance, was elected in 1890. 

In the Seventh District Haldoe E. Boen, 
People's Party, was elected in 1892. 

Since Henry M. Rice and James Shields, all 
the United States Senators have been Repub- 
lican, as follows: Morton S. Wilkinson, Al- 
exander Ramsey, Daniel S. Norton, William 
Windom, O. 1'. Stearns, S. J. R. McMillin, A. J. 
Edgerton, D. M. Sabin, <'. K. Davis, W. D. 
Washburn, and Knute Nelson. 

Some of these have served two terms, and 
some very short terms to fill vacancies. 

Of course, the State had its complement of 
other officers, but as their duties are more of 
a clerical and business character than political, 
it is unnecessary to particularize them. 



It is a subjeel of congratulation to all citi- 
zens of Minnesota that out of all the Stale 
officers that have come and gone in the forty 
years of its life there has been hut one im- 
peachment, which was of a State treasurer, 
Mr. William Seeger, who was elected in 1871. 
Although he was convicted, I have always be- 
lieved, and do now, that he was personally 
innocent, and suffered for the sins of others. 

The State of Minnesota has always, since 
the adjustment of ils old Railroad Bond Debt. 
held a conservative position in the Union— 
financially, socially, patriotically and commer- 
cially. Its credit is the best, its prospects the 
brightest, and it makes very little difference 
which political party dominates its future, so 
long as it is free from the taint of anarchy and 
is guided by the principles of honor and jus- 
tice. The only thing to be feared is, that some 
political party may gain control of the govern 
ment of the Nation and either degrade its cur- 
rency, involve it in disastrous complications 
and wars with other nations, or commit some 
similar folly which may reflectively or sec- 
ondarily act injuriously on Minnesota as a 
member of the National family of Stales. 
Otherwise Minnesota can defy the vagaries of 
politics and politicians. She has very little to 
fear from this remote apprehension, because 
the American people, as they ever have been. 
will no doubt continue to be, on second 
thought, true to the teachings and traditions 
of the founders of the Republic. 

Minnesota, for so young a State, has been 
quite liberally remembered in the way of diplo- 
matic appointments. Gen. C. C. Andrews rep 
resented the United States as Minister to Swe 
den and Norway; Hon. Samuel R. Thayer and 
Hon. Stanford Newell at The Hague, the latter 
of whom now tills the position. Mr. Newell 
was also a member of the World's Peace Com- 
mission recently held at The Hague. Lewis 
Baker represented the United States as Min- 
ister to Nicaragua, Costa Rica and San Sal 
vador. 

The State has also been honored by the ap- 
pointment of the following named gentlemen 
from among its citizens as Consuls General to 
various countries: 



I 12 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



Gen. 0. 0. Andrews to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 
Hon. Hans Mattson to Calcutta, India; Dr. 
J. A. Leonard to Calcutta, and also to Shang- 
hai, China; Hon. John Goodenow to Shang- 
hai, China. 

We have had a full complement of consuls 
to all parts of the world, the particulars of 
which are unnecessary in this connection. 

The State has also had three cabinet officers. 
On December 10th, 1879, Alexander Ramsey 
was appointed Secretary of War by President 
Hayes, and again, on December 20, 1S80, he 
was made Secretary of the Navy; the latter 
office he held only about ten days, until it was 
filled by a permanent appointee. 

William Windom was appointed Secretary 
of the Treasury by President Garfield, and 
again to the same position by President Har- 
rison. He died in office. 

Gen. William G. Le Due was appointed 
Commissioner of Agriculture by President 
Hayes, which was a quasi cabinet position, 
and was afterwards made a full and regular 
one. The General was afterwards made a mem- 
ber of the National Agricultural Society of 
France, of which Washington, Jefferson and 
Marshall were members. 

Senator Cushman K. Davis, who was chair- 
man of the Committee on Foreign Relations of 
the Senate, was appointed by President Me- 
Kinley one of the commissioners on the part 
of the United States to negotiate the treaty of 
peace with Spain after the recent Spanish war. 

Gov. William R. Merriam was appointed by 
President McKinley as Director of the Census 
of 1900, and is now busily engaged in the per- 
formance of the arduous duties of that office. 
They are not diplomatic, but exceedingly im- 
portant. 

President Cleveland appointed John W. 
Riddle as Secretary of Legation to the embassy 
at Constantinople, where he has remained to 
the present time. 



subjects treated of, but also in the manner of 
such treatment. Details have usually been 
avoided, and comprehensive generalities in- 
dulged in. Those who read it may find many 
things wanting, and in order that they may 
have an opportunity to supply my deficiencies 
w ithout too much research and labor, I have 
prepared a list of all the works which have 
ever been written on Minnesota, or any partic 
ular subject pertaining thereto, and append 
them hereto for convenience of reference. Am 
and all of them can be found in the library 
of the Minnesota Historical Society in the 
State Capitol. 

So much of what I have said consists of per- 
sonal experiences, and observations, that it 
more resembles a narrative than a history, but 
I think I can safely vouch for the accuracy and 
truthfulness of all I have thus related. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



Necessity has compelled me, in the prepara- 
tion of this history, to be brief, not only in the 



BOOKS WHICH HAVE BEEN PUB 

LISHED RELATING TO 

MINNESOTA. 

The following will be found in "COLLEC- 
TIONS OF THE MINNESOTA HISTORICA L 
SOCIETY, Volume I, St. Paul, 1872": 

The French Voyageurs to Minnesota During 
the Seventeenth Century, by Rev. E. 1). 
Neill. 

Description of Minnesota (1850), by Hon. Hen 
ry H. Sibley. 

Our Field of Historical Research, by Hon. Al- 
exander Ramsey. 

Early Courts of Minnesota, by Hon. Aaron 
Goodrich. 

Early Schools of Minnesota, by D. A. J. Baker. 

Religious Movements in Minnesota, by Rev. C. 
Hobart. 

The Dakota Language, by Rev. S. R. Riggs. 

History and Physical Geography of Minne- 
sota, by H. R. Schoolcraft. 

Letters of Mesnard, by Rev. E. D. Neill. 

The Saint Louis River, by T. M. Fullerton. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



113 



Ancient Mounds and Memorials, by Messrs. 
Pond, Aiton and Riggs. 

Schoolcraft's Exploring Tour of 1832, by Rev. 
\Y. T. Boutwell. 

Battle of Lake Pokegama, by Rev. E. D. Neill. 

Memoir of Jean Nicollet, by Hon. Henry H. 
Sibley. 

Sketch of Joseph Renville, by Rev. E. D. Neill. 

Department of Hudson's Bay, by Rev. G. A. 
Belcourt. 

Obituary of James M. Goodhue, by Rev. E. D. 
Neill. 

Dakota Land and Dakota Life, by Rev. K. D. 
Neill. 

Who Were the First Men? by Rev. T. S. Wil- 
liamson. 

Louis Hennepin the Franciscan, and DuLuth 
the Explorer. 

LeSueur, the Explorer of the Minnesota River. 

D'Iberville, An Abstract of His Memorial. 

The Fox and Ojibway War. 

Captain Jonathan Carver and his Explorations. 

Pike's Explorations in Minnesota. 

Who Discovered Itasca Lake? by William Mor- 
rison. 

Early Days at Fort Snelling. 

Punning the Gauntlet, by William I. Snelling. 

Reminiscences, Historical and Personal. 

Volume II. 

Voyage in a Six Oared Skiff to the Falls of St. 
Anthony in 1817, by Maj. Stephen H. Long. 

Early French Forts and Footprints of the Val- 
ley of the Upper Mississippi, by Rev. E. D. 
Neill. 

Occurrences In and Around Fort Snelling from 
1819 to 1840, by Rev. E. D. Neill. 

Religion of the Dakotas (Chapter VI. of James 
W. Lynd's Manuscripts). 



Mineral Regions of Lake Superior, from Their 
First Discovery in 18G5, by Hon. Henry M. 
Rice. 

Constantine Beltrami, by Alfred J. Hill. 

Historical Notes on the IT. S. Land Office, by 
Hon. Henry M. Rice. 

The Geography of Perrot, so far as it relates 
to Minnesota, by Alfred J. Hill. 

Dakota Superstitions, by Rev. Gideon II. Pond. 

The Carver Centenary; an account of the cele- 
bration, May 1, 18G7, of the one hundredth 
anniversary of the council and treaty of 
Capt. Jonathan Carver with the Nadowes- 
sioux, at Carver's cave, in St. Paul, with an 
address by the Rev. John Mattocks. 

Relation of M. Penticant, translated by Alfred 
J. Hill, with an introductory note by the 
Rev. E. D. Neill. 

Bibliography of Minnesota, by J. Fletcher Wil- 
liams. 

A Reminiscence of Fort Snelling, by Mrs. Char 
lotte O. Van Cleve. 

Narrative of Paul Ma-za-koo-to-ma-ne. Trans 
lated by Rev. S. R. Riggs. 

Memoir of Ex-Governor Henry A. Swift, by J. 
Fletcher Williams. 

Sketch of John Otherday, by Hon. Henry H. 
Sibley. 

A Coincidence, by Mrs. Charlotte O. Van Cleve. 

Memoir of Hon. James W. Lynd, by Rev. S. R. 

Riggs. 
The Dakota Mission, by Rev. S. R. Riggs. 

Indian Warfare in Minnesota, by Rev. S. W. 
Pond. 

Colonel Leavenworth's Expedition to Establish 
Fort Snelling in 1819, by Maj. Thomas For- 
syth. 

Memoir of Jean Baptiste Faribault, by Gen. II. 
H. Sibley. 

Memoir of Capt. Martin Scott, by J. Fletcher 
Williams. 

Xa peh-shnee-doo-ta, a Dakota Christian, by 
Rev. T. S. Williamson. 



H4 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



Memoir of Hercules L. Dousinan, by Gen. Hen 

ry H. Sibley. 

Memoir of Joseph R. Brown, by J. P. Williams, 
E. S. Goodrich and J. A. Wheelock. 

.Memoir of Hon. Cyrus Aldrich, by J. Fletcher 
Williams. 

Memoir of Rev. Lucian Galtier, by Archbishop 
John Ireland. 

Memoir of Hon. David Olmsted, by J. Fletcher 
Williams. 

Reminiscences of the Early Days of Minnesota, 
by Hon. H. H. Sibley. 

The Sioux or Dakotas of the Missouri River, 
by Rev. T. S. Williamson. 

.Memoir of Rev. S. Y. McMasters, by Earle S. 
Goodrich. 

Tributes to the Memory of Rev. John Mattocks, 
by J. Fletcher Williams, non. Henry II. 
Sibley, John B. Sanborn and Archbishop 
Ireland. 

Memoir of Ex-Governor Willis A. Gorman. 
Compiled from Press Notices and Eulogy 
by Hon. C. K. Davis. 

Lake Superior, Historical and Descriptive, by 
Hon. James H. Baker. 

Memorial Notices of Rev. Gideon H. Pond, by 
Rev. S. R. Riggs, Hon. H. H. Sibley ami 
Rev. T. S. Williamson. 

In .Memory of Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, by 
Rev. S. R. Riggs and A. W. Williamson. 

The Ink-pa-du-ta Massacre of 1857, by Hon. 
Charles E. Flandrau. 

Volume IV. 

History of the City of St. Paul and County of 
Ramsey, Minnesota, by J. Fletcher Wil- 
liams, containing a very full sketch of the 
first sell lenient and early days of St. Paul, 
in 1838, 1839 and 1840, ami of the Territory 
from 1849 to 185S; lists of the early set- 
tlers and claim owners; amusing events of 
pioneer days; biographical sketches of over 
two hundred prominent men of early times; 



three sled portraits ami forty-seven wood 
eiiis (portraits and views); lists of Federal, 
county and city officers since 1849. 

Volume Y. 

History ot the Ojibway Nation, by William VV. 
Warren (deceased); a valuable work, con 
taining the legends and traditions of Hie 
Ojibways, their origin, history, costumes, 
religion, daily life and habits, ideas, biogra- 
phies of leading chieftains and orators, viv- 
id descriptions of battles, etc. The work was 
carefully ediled by Rev. Edward D. Neill, 
who added an appendix of 116 pages, giving 
an account of the ojibways from official 
and other records. It also contains a por- 
trait of Warren, a memoir of. him by -I. 
Fletcher Williams, and a copious index. 

Volume VI. 

The Sources of the Mississippi; Their Discov- 
ery, Real and Pretended, by Hon. James H. 
Baker. 

The Hennepin Bi-Centenary; celebration by 
the .Minnesota Historical Society of the 
200th anniversary of the discovery of the 
Falls of St. Anthony in 1080, by Louis Hen 
nepin. 

Early Days at Red River Settlement and Fort 
Snelling. reminiscences of Mrs. Ann Adams. 

Protestant Missions in the Northwest, by Rev. 
Stephen R. Riggs. with a memoir of the 
author, by J. Fletcher Williams. 

Autobiography of Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro, 
Indian agent at Fort Snelling, 1820 to 1840. 

Memoir of Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley, by J. 
Fletcher Williams. 

Mounds in Dakota. Minnesota and Wisconsin, 
by Alfred J. Hill. 

Columbian Address, delivered by Hon. H. \Y. 
Childs, before the Minnesota Historical So- 
ciety; October 21, 1892. 

Reminiscences of Fort Snelling. by Col. John 
I -diss. 



niSTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



IO 



Sioux Outbreak of LS(»-J; Mrs. J. E. DeCamp's 
narrative of her captivity. 

A Sioux Story of tin- War; Chief Big Eagle's 
Story of the Sioux Outbreak of L862. 

Incidents of the Threatened Outbreak of Hole- 
in t he-day and Other Ojibways at the Time 
of (lie Sioux Massacre in 1862, by George 

W. Sweet. 

Dakota Scalp Dances, by Rev. T. S. William 

son. 

Earliest Schools in Minnesota Valley, by Rev. 
T. S. Williamson. 

Traditions of Sioux Indians, by Maj. William 
II. Forbes. 

Death of a Remarkable .Man — Gabriel Fran- 
chore — by Hon. Benjamin I'. Avery. 

First Set I lenient on the Red River of the 
North in 1812, and the Condition in 1847, 
by Mrs. Elizabeth T. Ayres. 

Frederick Ayer, teacher and missionary to the 
Ojibway Indians, 1829 to 1850. 

Captivity Among the Sioux, Story of Nancy 
McClure. 

Captivity Among the Sioux, Story of Mary 
Sclrwandt. 

Autobiography and Reminiscences of Philan- 
der Prescott. 

Recollections of James M. Goodhue, by Col. 
John H. Stevens. 

History of the Ink-pa-du-ta Massacre, by Abbie 
Gardner Sharp. 

Volume VII. 

The Mississippi River and Its Source; a nar- 
rative and critical history of the river and 
its headwaters, accompanied by the results 
of detailed hydrographic and topographic 
surveys; illustrated with many maps, por 
traits and views of the scenery; by Hon. 
J. V. Brower, commissioner of the Itasca 
State Park, representing also the State His 
torical Society. With an appendix: How 
the Mississippi River and the Lake of the 



Woods Became Instrumental in the Estab 
lishment of the Northwestern Boundary of 
the United States, by Alfred J. Hill. 

Volume VIII. 

The International Boundary Between Lake Su- 
perior and the Lake of the Woods, by Ulys- 
ses Sherman Grant. 

The Settlement and Development of the Red 
River Valley, by Warren Upham. 

The Discovery and Development of the Iron 
Ores of Minnesota, by N. H. Winehell, Stale 
Geologist. 

The Origin and Growth of the Minnesota His 
torical Society, by the President, Hon. Al 
exander Ramsey. 

Opening of the Red River of the North to Coin 
merce and Civilization, with plates, by 
Capt. Russell Blakeley. 

Last Days of Wisconsin Territory, and Early 
Days of Minnesota Territory, by Hon. Hen 
ry L. Moss. 

Lawyers and Courts of .Minnesota Prior to and 
During Its Territorial Period, by Judge 
Charles E. Flandrau. 

Homes and Habitations of the Minnesota His- 
torical Society, by Charles E. Mayo. 

The Historical Value of Newspapers, by J. P.. 

Chaney. 
The United States Government Publications, 

by D. L. Kingsbury. 

The First Organized Government of Dakota, 
by Gov. Samuel J. Albright, with a preface 
by Judge Charles E. Flandrau. 

How Minnesota Became a State, by Professor 
Thomas F. Moran. 

Minnesota's Northern Boundary, by Alexander 
N. Winehell. 

The Question of the Sources of the Mississippi 
River, by Prof. E. Lavasseur. (Translated 
by William P. < Hough.) 

The Source of the Mississippi, by Prof. N. II. 
Winehell. 



no 



TT I STORY OF MINNESOTA. 



Prehistoric Man at the Headwaters of the 

Mississippi River (with plates), and an ad- 
dendum relating to the early visits of Mr. 
•Iiilius Chambers and the Rev. J. A. Gjl- 
lillan to Itasca Lake, by Hon. .J. V. Brower. 

History of Minnesota, by Rev. Edward D. Neill. 
First edition, 185S. (Has gone through four 
editions.) 

Concise History of the State of Minnesota, by 
Rev. Edward D. Neill. 1S87. 

Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, 1861, 
1805, prepared under the supervision of a 
committee appointed by the Legislature, 
1S90-1893, in two volumes. 

History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 
1862-1863, by Isaac V. D. Heard, 1865. 

A History of the Great Massacre by the Sioux 
Indians in Minnesota, by Charles S. Bryanl 
and Abel B. Murch, 1872. 

Minnesota Historical Society Collections, in 
eight volumes, 1850 to 1S98, containing 
many of the above named works and papers. 

History of St. Paul, Minnesota, by Gen. Chris- 
topher C. Andrews, 1890. 

History of the City of Minneapolis, by Isaac 
Atwater, in two volumes. 

Pen Pictures of St. Paul, Minnesota, and Bio- 
graphical Sketches of Old Settlers, by T. 
M. Newson. 

Fifty Years in the Northwest, by W. H. 0. 
Folsoni, 188S. 

The United States Biographical Dictionary 
and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self- 
Made Men, Minnesota volume by Jeremiah 
Clemens, assisted by J. Fletcher Williams, 
1879. 

Progressive Men of Minnesota, biographical 
sketches and portraits, together with an 
historical and descriptive sketch of the 
State, by Marion 1). Shutter and J. S. Mr- 
Lain, 1897. 

I.iographical History of the Northwest, by 
Alonzo Phelps, 1890. 



A History of th<- Republican Party, to which 
is added a political history of Minnesota 
from a Republican point of view, and bio- 
graphical sketches of leading Minnesota 
Republicans, by Eugene V. Smalley. 

There are also many quarto histories of coun 

ties in Minnesota, and of larger districts of 
the State, mostly published during the 
years 1880 to is'.io. including twenty coun- 
ties, namely, Dakota. Dodge, Faribault. 
Fillmore, Freeborn. Goodhue. Hennepin. 
Houston, Mcl.eod. Meeker. Olmsted. Pope, 
Ramsey, Rice, Steele. Stevens, Wabasha. 
Waseca, Washington and Winona, and five 
districts, namely, the St. Croix Valley, the 
Upper Mississippi Valley, the Minnesota 
Valley, the Red River Valley and Park Re 
gion and Southern Minnesota. 

Winona and lis Environs, by L. II. Bunnell, 
1897, with maps and portraits. 

I 
Among the earliest publications are: 

Minnesota and Its Resources, by J. Wesley 
1 loud, 1853. 

Minnesota Year Books, 1851, 1852, 1853, by 

William G. Le Due. 

Floral Home, or First Years of Minnesota. 
1857, by Harriet E. Bishop. 

Narratives and Reports of Travels and Ex- 
plorations, by Hennepin. Carver, Long 
and Keating. Beltrami, Featherstonhaugh, 
Schoolcraft, Nicollet, Owen. Oliphant, An- 
drews. Seymour and others. 

For Geographic and Geologic descriptions of 
Minnesota the reports of the geological and 
natural history survey are the most com 
plete sources of information, by Professor 
N. H. Winchell. State Geologist, assisted by 
Warren Upham, Ulysses Sherman Grant, 
and others. The annual reports comprise 
twenty three volumes, 1872 to 1894, with 
another to be published. Several other vol- 
umes have been issued as bulletins of the 
survey on iron, mining, birds, mammals, 
and fishes. 



HISTORY OF MINNESOTA. 



117 



Four thousand two hundred and fifty bound 
volumes of Minnesota newspapers, embrac- 
ing complete files of nearly all the news- 
papers ever published in Minnesota frora 

first to last. 

One thousand seven hundred and two 1 lis 

and about fifteen hundred pamphlets relat- 
ing in some way 1<> Minnesota history. All 
these books can be found in the library of 
the Minnesota Historical Society, which is 
always open to the public, free. 

Much historical and other information is con- 
tained in the messages of the Governors 



and reports of the various State officers, 
and especially in the Legislative .Manuals 
prepared for the use of the members of the 
Legislature by the Secretary of State, un 
der Chapter 122 of the General Laws of 
1893, and former laws. These Manuals, and 
especially thai of. 1899, are replete with 
valuable statistics concerning the Stale, its 
history and resources. 

Illustrated Bistory of Minnesota, by T. II. 
Kirk, M. L., 1887. 

Ancestry, Life and Times of Henry Hastings 
Sibley, by Nathaniel West, D. D., 1889. 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY 

OF MINNESOTA. 



JOHN S. PILLSBURY. 

Into the warp and woof of John Sargent 
Pillsbury's character arc woven the integrity, 
courage, thrift and persistence of the best New 
England Puritan ancestry, whose residence in 
America covered a period of more than two 
and one-half centuries. Joshua Pillsbury, the 
English emigrant, settled in Newburyport, 
Massachusetts, in 1640, and received a grant of 
land at that place, a portion of which still re- 
mains in the possession of his descendants. 
One of these descendants, Micajah Pillsbury, 
the grandfather of the subject of this biog- 
raphy, settled in Sutton, New Hampshire, in 
L790, where on the 19th day of July, 1S28, John 
Sargent Pillsbury was born. His father was a 
manufacturer, successful in business and for 
many years prominent in his neighborhood and 
the political affairs of the State, esteemed for 
the probity of his private life and the con- 
scientious performance of public duty. His 
mother was Susan Wadleigh, ;i descendant of 
Robert Wadleigh, of Exeter, New Hampshire, 
who was a member of the Provincial Legisla- 
ture, and whose son, Capt. Thomas Wadleigh, 
held a commission in the Continental army. 
His mother's mother was a daughter of Eben- 
ezer Kezar, one of the capable and honorable 
early settlers of Sutton. One naturally expects 
a buy sprung from such ancestry, and inherit- 
ing the admirable traits inherent in it, to make 
the best possible use of his opportunities. And 
that is what John S. Pillsbury has done. In 
youth he enjoyed only the limited educational 
advantages of his native town, performing 



meanwhile his full share of manual labor. At 
an early age he entered the office of a local 
newspaper for the purpose of learning the 
printer's trade, but at the age of sixteen had 
the wisdom to abandon it as unsuited to his 
inclination and talent for mercantile pursuits 
— the larger held of trade and commerce. For 
six years thereafter he was employed as clerk 
in a general store at Warner, New Hampshire, 
and for the two years next following he was in 
] partnership with Walter Harriman, a mer- 
chant of the same town, who subsequently 
served as Governor of his State. Half a cen- 
tury ago it was necessary for a boy to serve 
an apprenticeship for several years, even to 
become proficient as clerk in a country store. 
The discipline was more severe and the re- 
quirements more exacting than now, when a 
young man imagines himself transformed into 
a safe and successful merchant by an ex- 
perience of half a year as clerk. The greater 
thoroughness in the training and the severer 
discipline incident to employment in the last 
generation, were potent factors in the develop- 
ment of the qualities of mind, trend of thought 
and methods of business, characteristic of the 
men who have achieved the largest successes 
in the present generation. They contributed 
to that splendid equipment of character and 
habit which enabled John S. Pillsbury to be- 
come one of the foremost citizens of the 
Northwest, and one of the grandest Governors 
of a State that has developed many great men. 
After conducting mercantile business at Con- 
cord for two years on his own account, hi' 
became convinced of the larger and better 



119 



120 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



opportunities for growth in the West, and 
deliberately formed the purpose of prospecting 
to find a desirable and promising location. He 

never drifted, and never formed plans hastily. 
His judgment, after careful investigation and 
reflection, determined liis action. So that, 
starting out from his New England home in 
1853 for a tour of observation in the West, 
he did not decide upon a new residence until 
June, 1855, when lie visited the young State of 
.Minnesota. The Falls of St. Anthony influenced 
his decision. He foresaw in the power they 
afforded the possibilities of a great city on 
the adjacent, banks of the Mississippi. He 
settled in the town of St. Anthony, which was 
later to become merged and lost in the greater 
city of Minneapolis. He liked the spirit and 
energy of the West, and possessed the capacity 
to become a leader in the progress and enter- 
prise and development of a new commonwealth 
on the frontier. Associating himself with his 
brother-in-law, Woodbury Fisk. and George A. 
Cross, in a partnership for carrying on trade 
in hardware, the Arm continued business 
through the dark period of financial depression 
and panic in L857, until the store and stock 
were completely destroyed by tire, about the 
time that hundreds of other firms in the East 
and the West were forced to close their doors 
through failure to meet liabilities. Four 
things were left to Mr. Pillsbury, unscathed by 
the fire — debts, courage, integrity and persist 
ence. He settled the debts of the firm with his 
individual notes, assumed all liabilities, satis- 
fied all creditors, and resumed business which 
he continued for eighteen years with marked 
success, and then disposed of it in order to 
devote himself entirely to the manufacture of 
Hour. He had already interested himself in 
establishing the milling industry at Minneap- 
olis in connection with his nephew, Charles A. 
Pillsbury, and his brother, John A. Pillsbury, 
conducting the business under the firm name 
of C. A. Pillsbury & Co. Another nephew, 
Fred G, was subsequently admitted to the 
firm. The magnitude of this milling business 
has grown to enormous proportions. The prod- 
uct of the marvelous mills has reached all the 
civilized countries of the globe, and contrib- 



uted to the fame of the millers throughout the 
world. Fostered with sedulous care, and 
managed with remarkable sagacity, the profits 
of the business naturally enriched the men 
who founded the industry, and have kept it 
going for more than a quarter of a century. 
The Pillsbury Mills have been maintained on 
their own merit and operated independently. 
\\ hen a movement was started in 1899 to com 
bine all the milling interests of the Northwest 
in one enormous trust, strong enough to tix 
prices and control the production, Governor 
Pillsbury said "No" with emphasis, and stead- 
f i i si ly refused, either to consider any proposit ion 
or to countenance the proposed combination. 
He stands opposed to trusts, whose evi- 
dent object is to increase the prices of prod 
ucts, and thus place on consumers additional 
burdens. He believes in competition and the 
rewards of individual effort and excellence. 
Only a man of broad and flexible mind is aide 
to devote his energies and directing force to 
several kinds of business at the same time, 
successfully. Governor Pillsbury is able to do 
this in a very marked degree. In addition to 
milling, he has carried on lumbering on a large 
scale, and been a liberal purchaser of real es- 
tate. He has been identified with the construe 
tion of railroads, and for many years has held 
a place in the directory of several important 
railroad companies. He has also for a long 
time served on the board of directors of some 
of the most prosperous banks of Minneapolis; 
is a director of the Stockyards Company and of 
the Washburn Mills Company. While pri- 
marily a business man and occupied with the 
management of large industries and transpor- 
tation companies and commercial or financial 
institutions, he has on various occasions ac- 
ceded to the wishes of his fellow citizens to 
serve the public in political office. Never a 
candidate in the sense of actively seeking 
office, he has always acknowledged the obliga- 
tions of citizenship and never shirked any 
duty or responsibility to the municipality or 
the commonwealth imposed by his conscious 
ness of such obligation. He served as member 
of the city council ten years, and from 180:? to 
1N7<>. with a single brief interval, he was a 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



121 



Senator in the State Legislature. About the 
same time lie was appointed one of the Re- 
gents of the State University, whose financial 
condition had for some years been deplorable. 
The public lands granted by Congress in L851 
for the establishment of a university, had been 
mortgaged and bonded for a loan of forty 
thousand dollars, to be expended in the con- 
struction of the main college building; and as 
soon as this building was completed, it was 
encumbered by a mortgage of fifteen thousand 
dollars. This was in 1857, the year of the 
disastrous panic. The trustees were unable 
to meet the demands of creditors clamoring for 
their dues, and at length despaired of being- 
able to extricate the university from its finan- 
cial embarrassments. There was a general opin- 
ion that the lands would have to be sold to 
pay the debts, and the maintenance of a higher 
institution of learning by the State abandoned. 
This course was recommended bv Governor 
Ramsey in his message to the Legislature in 
1862. Meanwhile, Mr. Pillsbury, a sincere ad- 
vocate of broader and more thorough educa- 
tion than he had been able to procure in youth, 
and which the university alone can furnish, 
studied the situation earnestly with a view to 
evolving some measure of relief. He was then 
a private citizen, but the following year afford- 
ed him the opportunity for effective work. 
What he did is thus told graphically by a for- 
mer biographer: 

"In 1863 Mr. Pillsbury was appointed 
one of the Regents of the university, 
and commenced specially to investigate tin- 
details of the institution, the situation and 
amount of its debts, and the location and char- 
acteristics of the land which had been granted 
it; and, in short, he looked into every detail as 
thoroughly as a man would do with his own 
business affairs. In 18(!?> he was also elected a 
member of the State Senate, when he at once 
proposed a plan to the Legislature, whereby the 
whole affairs of the university were placed in 
the hands of a new board of regents. This board 
was composed of Hon. John Nichols of St. 
Paul, Hon. O. G. Merriam of St. Anthony and 
John S. Pillsbury. He found a strong friend 
and ally in the person of Hon. John M. Berry, 
then a lawyer of Faribault, but afterwards, 
and for many years, one of the Justices of the 



Supreme Court of Minnesota. Mr. Berry en- 
tered enthusiastically into Mr. Pillsbury's 
plan for the restoration of the university; in- 
deed, drew up and introduced the measure 
which resulted in the new board of regents. 
This act became a law March 4, 18C4, and is 
found in chapter XVIII. of the General Laws 
of Minnesota for that year. We refer to it 
thus definitely, as it is a memorable act in the 
history of the university, and many of its pro- 
visions are well worthy of the attention ami 
consideration of those who may hereafter wish 
to study the history of that institution. The 
act placed all the affairs of the university 'in 
their discretion to compromise, settle and pay 
any and all claims and demands of whatsoever 
nature, against the University of Minnesota, 
or the regents thereof.' Some of the claims 
had been due for many years, and were in dis- 
pute as to their items; many were held by 
parties outside the State, and in order to ad- 
just them. Mr. Pillsbury was compelled to 
visit various parts of the country. Finally, 
after a great deal of effort, he succeeded in 
fully discharging all the outstanding bonds, 
liens and claims of every kind, to the entire 
satisfaction of those holding the claims, as 
well as the friends of the university. This he 
did without compensation to himself, and 
there was saved to the university upwards of 
thirty thousand acres of the land grant which 
Congress had made, and the present site of the 
university of twenty-five acres, with the cam- 
pus and buildings, which are to-day valued at 
fully half a million dollars. Mr. rillsbury's 
efforts did not abate one whit after the finan- 
cial affairs of the institution were thus settled. 
From 1863 until 1870 he was a member of the 
State Senate, excepting one and a half terms, 
and during this entire period he made the 
affairs of the university and its management 
his constant study. Governor Pillsbury has 
well earned the name of 'Father of the Uni- 
versity,' given him by the grateful students of 
that institution, and he has crowned his long- 
years of service as regent, with a gift of one 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars made in 
1889." 



President Northrop, in his baccalaureate ad- 
dress June 2, of that year, referred to Governor 
Pillsbury and his noble gift in the following- 
terms: 

"The name of George Peabody, whose monu- 
ment may be seen in Harvard and Yale, and 



122 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



men who have within the last few years done 
great service to humanity by unprecedented 
gifts, especially Otis, Hand and Slater, all of 
Connecticut, will readily occur to you; and I 
am sure thai as I speak all of you are thinking 
of the recent noble j^ift to tliis university by 
our friend and neighbor, Governor Pillsbury. 
It is not the flrsl time that he has shown his 
generous interest in this institution; indeed, 
it is owing to him that the university exists at 
all, for, by unwearied efforts of his, the univer- 
sity was secured from hopeless debt even be- 
fore it was organized for work. During all the 
years in which that aide scholar, Dr. Folwell, 
the flrsl president of the university, was laying 
its foundations and wisely planning its educa- 
tional work, Governor Pillsbury was the sa- 
gacious counsellor, the earnest friend, the 
faithful regent, watching over the financial 
interests of the institution with ceaseless vigi- 
lance, ever ready to sacrifice his time, his busi- 
ness and his ease to its welfare. By his kind- 
ness and charity in his daily life, by his public 
spirit, his wise services to theState in both leg- 
islative and executive positions, his free-hand- 
ed benevolence to the suffering people of the 
Slate in a time of great trial, and his firm 
and determined stand for the honor of the 
State in a time of great public temptation, he 
deserves to be remembered with gratitude by 
the people of this State to the remotest gen- 
eration. Hut for no one of his many noble deeds 
will he be longer remembered than for this, 
his munificent -iff of $150,000 to the State and 
the university at a time when the financial con- 
dition of the State made it impossible for the 
Legislature, however well disposed, to granl 
the money which it needed to carry forward 
its enlarging work. He has shown himself 
wise in making this gift while he lived, and 
might justly hope to witness in the increased 
prosperity, the fruits of his own benevolence. 
He has shown himself wise in estimating 
money at its just value — not for what it is, but 
for what it can do — not as something to be 
held and loved and gloated over, or to be ex 
pended in personal aggrandizement and lux- 
ury, but as something which can work might- 
ily for humanity; which can re-enforce even 
the educational power of a sovereign State; 
which can enrich human minds, and can thus 
lift up into the true greatness of a noble citi- 
zenship the sons and daughters of the whole 
Northwest." 



The acumen and foresight of John S. Tills 
bury, as exhibited in all commercial and indus- 



trial enterprises with which he hail connec- 
tion, marked him as a man who could be 
trusted with the larger affairs of the public; 
his application to acquire a complete under- 
standing of the financial entanglements in 
which the State University was involved, and 
his unselfish devotion to the work of relieving 
it, gave him a peculiar hold upon intelligent 
popular favor. In 1ST"), therefore, lie was nom- 
inated with perfect unanimity by the Repub 
lican convention, and elected Governor of the 
Stale. Endowed by nature with keen percep- 
tion, and educated liberally by contact with 
men of affairs in that great school of prac- 
tical business, his knowledge of men was al- 
most unerring, and his judgment as to their 
capabilities and weaknesses was to a degree 
infallible. This superior executive ability, so 
essential to a judicious exercise of the appoint- 
ing power, supported by his own personal in- 
tegrity and deep sense of official honor and 
responsibility, enabled him to give to the peo- 
ple of the State a pure and wholesome admin- 
istration. His mental grasp, breadth of view. 
trained sagacity, honest purpose and equable 
temperament qualified him to administer the 
government and execute the laws wisely. He 
was very early confronted with novel condi- 
tions, which demanded instant attention and 
relief. The ravages of the grasshoppers had 
laid waste large agricultural sections and left 
the farmers destitute. The Governor, incog- 
nito, made a tour of the devastated portions 
of the State in order to ascertain the extent of 
ruin, and thus qualify himself to provide and 
recommend adequate measures of relief. He 
found much destitution and suffering — some of 
the settlers without sufficient food; others 
without clothing — at the opening of winter. 
They were independent, self-supporting citi- 
zens, who would ordinarily scorn the offer of 
assistance; but the distress of their families 
was too great for pride to refuse the proffered 
aid of their more fortunate fellow citizens. The 
Governor's sympathies were deeply touched, 
and he generously relieved by his private 
purse many of the cases of immediate want, 
discovered while he was passing unknown 
among the distressed people. He also made 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



I2 3 



public appeal for relief to the prosperous peo- 
ple of the State, and volunteered to superin- 
tend the distribution of all donations of food, 
clothing, fuel and money. When the Legisla- 
ture assembled, he recommended an appropri- 
ation from the treasury sufficient to relieve the 
want, and urged immediate action. His rec- 
ommendation received favorable action. He 
was also called upon to deal with another raid 
during the first term, when the gang of free- 
booters from Missouri, known as the Younger 
Brothers, entered the State to prosecute their 
trade of robbery and murder, and the State 
prison rolls attest the complete success of the 
prompt measures instituted by him for the 
capture of the outlaws. Governor Pillsbury 
was re-elected in 1877, and again in 187!), 
serving three consecutive terms, a distinction 
accorded to no other man in the history of the 
State. During his second term Governor Pills- 
bury was instrumental in effecting the settle- 
ment of a contention between the settlers on 
railroad lands granted to the State by the St. 
Paul and Pacific Railroad company and the 
Western Railroad company as successor of 
the grantee, and his thorough knowledge of the 
history of the transaction, supported by his 
sense of justice, his inflexible will and his per- 
sistence iii the accomplishment of a purpose, 
saved their homes to three hundred settlers, 
and established himself immovably in the af- 
fections and confidence of the people. The 
crowning glory of Governor Pillsbury's admin- 
istration was the preservation of the honor 
and the restoration of the credit of the State 
by effecting a complete settlement of its debts 
and the payment of its bonds, which had been 
repudiated. The story of the issue of these 
bonds is told in the historical article elsewhere 
printed in this volume. The people had voted 
in 1857, by a majority of five to one, to create 
a debt of five million dollars, evidenced by 
bonds, to aid in the construction of railroads. 
Contracts were executed, by which certain 
companies agreed to build lines of road and 
accept the bonds in payment. Considerable 
grading was done on different lines, but no 
road was ever built. The Legislature of 18G1 
repudiated the bonds. Subsequently the con- 



tracting companies failed and defaulted, and 
the Slate foreclosed on their property and 
gave it to new companies undertaking to com- 
plete the work. The bonds had been duly au- 
thorized and regularly issued. They had been 
purchased in good faith by innocent investors, 
and Governor Pillsbury insisted the State 
should keep faith with its creditors. He adverted 
to the subject in messages to the Legislature, 
and urged the importance of a settlement. A 
proposition to set aside for the payment of the 
bonds five hundred thousand acres of land 
granted to the Territory by Congress for pur- 
poses of internal improvement was submitted 
to the people in 1878 and rejected by a vote of 
two to one. These discouraging conditions 
only served to increase the energy and make 
unalterable the determination of Governor 
Pillsbury to save the State from dishonor. To 
a company of prominent gentlemen who called 
on him after the result of the popular vote be- 
came known, he said : "My children were bom 
in Minnesota, my home is here; but I want to 
say now, that no matter what interests I have 
to attract me here, whether financial or sen- 
timental, I will not live in a repudiating State. 
I will never give up this fight so long as there 
is a shadow of a hope. I will stump for it and 
vote for it and fight for it. The bonds shall be 
paid." His personal efforts equaled his otti 
cial solicitude for the welfare of the State and 
his earnest endeavor was directed to securing 
a settlement. The question as to the validity 
of the bonds was submitted to the Supreme 
Court and they were adjudged valid. The 
Governor called an extra session of the Legis- 
lature and secured the passage of an act au- 
thorizing a new loan evidenced by bonds bear- 
ing five per cent interest. By consultation 
with the principal creditor, he was able to 
effect the acceptance of a four and a half per 
cent bond to replace the old ones, thus saving 
1400,000 in interest. The Governor invested a 
million dollars of the State's school fund in the 
bonds. Some opposition to the issuing of these 
bonds was developed and injunction proceed- 
ings were threatened. To avoid delay, Gover- 
nor Pillsbury carried the bonds to his home, 
signed them at night, and delivered them be- 



I2 4 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



fore the opposition took form in the filing of a 
complaint. The credit of the State was at 
once restored by the action of its honest Gov- 
ernor, and since thai time no State has enjoyed 
higher credit than Minnesota. Actuated by 
tender memories of his childhood home and 
grateful appreciation of his ancestors, Gover- 
nor Pillsbury erected a beautiful Memorial 
Hall at Sutton, New Hampshire, which was 
dedicated July 13, 1892, to the public uses for 
which it was designed — an assembly hall, a 
library and a meeting place for the selectmen 
of the town. The Governor's speech on that 
occasion was characteristic of the man. 
abounding in noble sentiment and practical in 
statistics portraying the marvelous growth of 
the country during the brief span of one hu- 
man life. The address was not only broad and 
generous in conception, but faultless in dic- 
tion and rhetoric. He referred with emotion 
to the fathers and mothers as follows: 



"What hardy men and women were the 
pioneers and early settlers of this town of Sut- 
ton. Let us not in these modern days, with all 
our conveniences and new methods, forget the 
rugged character and rigor and thrift and vir- 
tue and intrepidity of our ancestors who en- 
dured all the hardships of fifty and one hun- 
dred years ago, and who by their sacrifices and 
discipline and character which they have en- 
tailed upon their descendants, made it possible 
for us to enjoy what we have to-day. Let us 
of to-day not boast of what we have done. Out 
of the loins of the New England fathers and 
mothers of past generations came the sources 
of the wealth and strength of to-day. No- 
where in history can be found a more rugged 
set of men than our New England fathers; and 
among the women of the world, where can 
there be found the equal of the New England 
mothers who have passed away? Would that 
I had the power of speech to give proper credit 
to those noble mothers of early days. 

Trace back the history of the men who have 
been famous in the world, and in the majority 
of cases you will find that the source of their 
best qualities was very largely in the mother. 
And for noble motherhood you will nowhere 
find surpassed those New England mothers of 
a generation or more ago, who reared up with 
their own hands those large families of sons 
and daughters which were once the glory of 
New England. As the mother of Garfield, at 



the inauguration of her son as President, was 
the first to receive recognition as the bearer 
and mother of her son, and had a mother's de- 
light in his success, so may these New Eng- 
land towns, which have spared their sons and 
daughters for a season, claim the successes of 
these sons and daughters as their own.'' 

Governor Pillsbury is the only living mem- 
ber of the original firm that entered into the 
milling business in Minneapolis, and he has 
had the supervision of the business since the 
death of Charles A. Pillsbury, in August, 1S!)0. 
His familiarity with larger commercial affairs; 
his habit of application and his varied experi- 
ence in solving great problems in both private 
and official life, make his discharge of the du- 
ties easy. He is careful, methodical, earnest, 
thoughtful, never apparently in a hurry, and 
never behind with his work or his engage- 
ments. He is an officer of the First Congrega 
tional Church of Minneapolis and a liberal con- 
tributor to its support. November 3, 185C, he 
was married at Warner, New Hampshire, to 
Miss Mahala Fisk, a most estimable woman, 
whose affectionate sympathy and judicious ad- 
vice have always been helpful. John Sargent 
Pillsbury has the genius of common sense. He 
is under such perfect self-control and possesses 
the faculty of concentrating his mental forces 
to such a degree that all the powers of his 
mind are subservient to his will for the ac- 
complishment of a fixed purpose or the com- 
pletion of an assumed undertaking. His habits 
have been so simple and his life so well or- 
dered that the weight of more than seventy 
years rests lightly on him. His form is erect, 
his movement easy; his manner affable and 
his social intercourse marked by courtesy and 
cordiality. The force of his strong character 
is rendered lovable by a natural refinement 
and kindliness in social intercourse. He listens 
to a complaint or a suggestion with equal for- 
bearance, but never expresses his opinion with 
undue haste. In emergencies he decides in- 
stantly and acts promptly, with all the energy 
of a man accustomed to weigh his actions and 
measure his capabilities. He is natural and un- 
affected as a child, and free from any austerity 
of manner. He is neither effusive nor reserved. 





7 Cc^^f ^ _./ //_ / , , >. 



' 



RTOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



i- 7 5 



but simply natural and approachable. He is an 
earnest man, generous in his sympathies and 

just in his judgments. He cherishes that large- 
ness and liberality in religious belief which 
leaves every man free to formulate his own 
creed and finds its best expression in an up- 
right life, busy with good deeds and pervaded 
by a spirit to help the worthy who are in need. 
Whatever else may be engraved in his epitaph. 
the historic facts which made his administra- 
tion as Governor famous, should be expressed: 
"He saved the University to the State and 
saved the Stab' from dishonor." 



MRS. MAHALA FISK PILLSBURY. 

In choosing this subject as a representative 
woman of Minnesota, a tribute is paid to the 
womanhood of that State which can be fully 
appreciated only by those whom good fortune 
has led within the social circle of Mrs. Pills- 
bury, or, at least, within that larger circle of 
beneficent intluence which perpetually ra- 
diates from her personality. Yet Minnesota 
cannot claim her as a native daughter. She 
draws her heredity from a double line of New 
England's early settlers. The place of her 
birth was Springfield, New Hampshire, the 
date May 7, 1832. Her parents were Captain 
John and Sarah (Goodhue) Fisk, prominent 
citizens of the Granite State, who for many 
years resided in the town of Warner. Here 
they reared a large family, Mahala Fisk hav- 
ing three brothers — Woodbury, John and Jo- 
seph, and three sisters — Elizabeth, Sarah and 
.Mary. The American Fisks were descended — 
through William Fiske, the founder of tin- 
family in this country, who, in 1G37, settled in 
Wenham, Massachusetts — from an aristocrat- 
ic line of Englishmen with estates in Suffolk 
county, which line is traceable back to Simon 
Fisk, lord of a manor in the reign of Henry 
VI. Rut it is with a different type of nobility 
that this sketch will concern itself — a nobility 
not of titles and privileges, but of character 
and deeds; a nobility the insignia of which is 
not blazoned upon the breast, but graven deep 



within it. Mrs. Pillsbury is a true cosmopol 
itan; and although she may owe something of 
her dignity and poise to the inherent conscious- 
ness of high and honorable lineage, she is 
delightfully free from the spirit of exclusive 
ness and hauteur of manner which too fre 
quently accompany such a consciousness. Her 
childhood and youth were passed in the 
parental home, in Warner, a home dominated 
by the most healthful influences, religious and 
moral; nor was the intellectual side of her 
training neglected. She was privileged to at- 
tend both the Ilopkinton Academy and the 
Sanbornton Seminary, and she completed her 
studies at the age of nineteen. During the 
three years prior to her graduation, however, 
her time was divided between the acquiring 
and imparting of knowledge. Teaching was 
her chosen profession, and she followed it, at 
intervals, in the public schools of Keene and 
other towns of her State, up to the time of her 
marriage. On November 3, 1856, she was 
united to John S. Pillsbury, of Sutton, New 
Hampshire, and soon the youthful couple had 
bade farewell to their friends and were jour 
neying westward to found a home in Minneso- 
ta, which was then a Territory and little better 
than a wilderness. It was a bridal tour plenti- 
fully marked by events and diversions — events 
which were dire contingencies, and diversions 
which were imminent dangers. It took cour- 
age to leave such a home as had sheltered the 
girlhood of Mahala Fisk and face the rigors 
and perils of frontier life; but in courage, at 
least, and in that love which casts out fear, 
both these young wayfarers were richly capi- 
talized. Their destination was St. Anthony 
(now a part of Minneapolis), and here they 
began their Western life on an humble scale. 
The history of their first few years is one of 
hard work, misfortune and sacrifice; — the ex- 
perience common to settlers upon virgin soil. 
Nature has but one method of initiating those 
who are bold enough to venture into her 
rugged campus, lie one never so proudly born 
or daintily nurtured, his metal must be proven 
by the same ruthless hazing. Yet in homes 
like that of the Pillsburys, although meager 
in appointment as many another, hardship and 



126 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



privation were illumined by ideals, and the 
humdrum of toil relieved by the graces of cul- 
ture. In 1857, when Mr. Pillsbury's store was 
destroyed by tire, their vicissitudes culmi- 
nated in an almost total loss of their worldly 
possessions. Soon, however, the tide of pros- 
perity turned their way, and continued to flow 
with ever-increasing fullness. They erected a 
substantial house at the corner. of Fifth street 
and Tenth avenue south, which was for twenty 
years the family home. In 1878 this was re- 
placed by their present elegant residence, 
which occupies the same site as the old home- 
stead. During the Civil War. while her 
patriotic husband gave to the State his val- 
uable assistance in the task of raising troops, 
Mrs. I'illsbury was equally active in the organ 
izing of a society and the collecting of funds 
for the aid of the soldiers and relief of poverty 
in their families. Thus the sick were cared 
for, and substantial comforts added to many 
a destitute home. Following close upon the 
outbreak of the Rebellion came the horrors of 
an Indian massacre, in which hundreds of the 
Minnesota settlers were math' victims of sav- 
age slaughter. Mrs. I'illsbury, in the midst of 
treachery and death, stood steadfast as the 
granite of her native State, calmly preparing 
for a possible emergency by practicing the arts 
of defense and acquiring skill in the use of 
the rifle. Minnesota was but passing through 
the same throes which she knew as history of 
her own New Hampshire, and she was sus- 
tained in this fearful ordeal by traditions of 
the heroism of earlier pioneer women. More- 
over, she was strong with the strength of 
deep-founded religious faith. Mahala Fisk 
was a worthy representative of a fervently 
religious race, her English progenitors being 
among those persecuted during the struggle 
of the Reformation because of their adherence 
to Protestant principles. Throughout her resi- 
dence in Minnesota Mrs. I'illsbury has been 
closely identified with its religious life, which 
first took organic form in a little Congrega- 
tional church erected near the site of the Pills 
bury home, her diverse gifts finding expression 
in a diversity of work. Her natural talent for 
music, both vocal and instrumental, which had 



been cultivated during her seminary days at 
Sanbornton, were here devoted to the church. 
She was promptly appointed, and has ever 
since continued, a member of the music com- 
mittee, and for many years her sweet voice 
swelled the harmony of the choir. The genial 
womanliness of her character ever created an 
atmosphere of home about her, and this influ- 
ence has been a potent one in the church, en- 
listing in its activities many a new-comer and 
many a. frivolous or timid youth. In further- 
ing its social interests she has been a leading 
spirit and an indefatigable worker, lightening 
the pastor's burdens inestimably, though main- 
taining always a self-effacing modesty. In the 
Sunday-school her labors have been constant 
and her enthusiasm unwearying, and the young 
men and women who have gone forth to their 
life battles fortified by her wise and loving 
counsel have long ceased to be numbered. 
And, corresponding to her work as assistant 
and instructor in the church, has been her even 
more consecrated work as helpmeet and 
mother in the home. Governor and Mrs. 
I'illsbury were blessed with four chil- 
dren. Addie Eva was born October 4, 
1860. She was married October 8, 1884, 
to Charles M. "Webster — now a prominent 
business man at (heat Falls, Montana — and 
died April 2, 1885. Her native modesty and 
quiet, gentle character made her beloved by 
all. The second daughter, Susan M., born June 
1':!, 1863, grew to a beautiful womanhood, be- 
coming a general favorite through the sweet 
ness and sincerity of her character. She was 
married to Fred It. Snyder, a successful lawyer 
of Minneapolis, on September :.'.".. 1885, and 
died September :!, 1891, leaving an only child. 
John I'illsbury Snyder. Sarah Belle, born 
June 30, 1866, graduated from the University 
of Minnesota in 1888, and is now the wife of 
Edward C. Gale, of Minneapolis, a lawyer of 
high professional standing and literary cul- 
ture. Alfred Fisk, the only son, born October 
I'll, 1869, graduated at the University of Minne- 
sota, and now holds a prominent position in the 
I'illsbury -Washburn Flour Mills Company. His 
modest ways, native shrewdness and wise tact 
in dealing with business men has caused him 



IUOGKAPTTY OF MINNESOTA 



I2'j 



to be selected to handle delicate and important 
business missions abroad, with results which 
promise much for his business future. On 
May 15, 1899, he was married to Eleanor 
Louise, a daughter of the late Chief Justice 
Wallbridge A. Field of the Supreme Court of 
Massachusetts. In 1880 Mrs. Pillsbury 
united her own efforts with those of oth- 
er philanthropic women for the establish- 
ment of a home for destitute children and 
aged women. This enterprise was car 
ried into effect on a very small scale at first, 
with a few street waifs as beneficiaries; but 
soon the volume of applications which came 
pouring in showed the extent of the need which 
the institution was designed to till. Then 
quickly followed, in November, 1881, the or- 
ganizing of a society of ladies, of which Mrs. 
Pillsbury was made president, the raising of 
funds and the purchasing of the fine old home- 
stead and grounds of Judge Atwater, situated 
on the banks of the Mississippi. Commodious 
as were these quarters, however, they were 
soon found inadequate to the increasing de- 
mands upon them, and were eventually sold, 
and new buildings erected in Minneapolis at 
an expense of $40,000. Mrs. Pillsbury is still 
president of the institution, which is known 
as the Home tor Children and Aged Women. 
In all her good works she has always re- 
ceived the warm sympathy and support of her 
husband. Christmas of the year 1899 was made 
memorable in the history of the Home for 
Children and Aged Women by an endowment 
of $100,00(1 presented by her husband in her 
honor. This fund, the only endowment of the 
institution, is a permanent one, the income 
from which is to be used in the current ex- 
penses of the institution. It is designated the 
"Mahala Fisk Pillsbury Fund." Other in- 
stitutions in which our subject has been 
actively interested are: The Washburn 
Home, of which she is a trustee; the North- 
western Hospital for Women, and the Wom- 
an's Exchange. It would be vain to attempt 
enumerating the miscellaneous charities dis- 
persed by the hand of Mrs. Pillsbury. Pros- 
perity, in smiling upon her, smiles also upon 
the poor within the range of her helpfulness. 



such poor selected always with conscientious 
discrimination. Nor does she regard them 
merely as objects for her sympathy and aid, 
but as men and women entitled to her respect- 
ful regard. She recognizes and reverences 
true manhood and womanhood, whether it 
shines from the luxurious setting of wealth 
or is hidden in the obscurity of poverty. For 
bombastic display she has no kind regard; bu1 
she knows what others see so beautifully illus- 
trated in herself — that one may possess wealth, 
position and power and yet be modest and 
sincere. Unregenerate wealth she deems alike 
pitiable with unregenerate poverty, and even 
a more baffling problem to him who would 
reduce the world chaos to something like order 
and harmony. During her husband's tenure 
of the gubernatorial chair Mrs. Pillsbury filled 
with credit her honored position by his side. 
Nor did she feel herself removed by fortune 
from the people among whom she had toiled, 
but rather drawn nearer to them through her 
sense of added responsibility. It was during 
Governor Pillsbury's first term of office that 
large tracts of the State were laid waste by 
the grasshopper scourge, plunging the settlers 
into absolute want; and while her husband 
\isited in person the devastated districts, to 
assure himself of the extent of the suffering 
and need for succor, Mrs. Pillsbury was em- 
ployed in the organizing of a bureau of relief, 
with her own house as headquarters. So se- 
rious and widespread was this affliction, how- 
ever, that she soon found it necessary to rent 
a storehouse in which to collect and distribute 
supplies; and throughout that long, cold win- 
ter, she and her little band of assistants toiled, 
often far into the night, selecting and dispatch- 
ing articles in response to the many and varied 
appeals of the sufferers. As first lady of the 
State, Mrs. Pillsbury's versatile gifts were 
given full scope; but anyone who has looked 
upon her staunch and noble face knows that 
this woman was never made by outward cir- 
cumstances; that in whatever walk of life her 
lot might have been cast she would always 
have been a leader, an organizer and a liar 
monizer. She is one of those rare souls, too 
widely scattered to touch hands, yet linked by 



128 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



unity of faith and purpose, who form, as it 
were: 

"The rainbow to the storms of life; 
The evening beam that smiles the clouds 

away, 
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray." 



ALEXANDER RAMSEY. 

The last of the loyal "War Governors" of the 
Union and the first to answer Lincoln's call for 
volunteers, the Hon. Alexander Ramsey of 
Minnesota, was born near Harrisburg, Dan 
phin county, Pennsylvania, September 8, 181. r >. 
He is descended from two old Pennsylvania 
families. His paternal grandfather, for whom 
he was christened, was born in the eastern 
part of the then province, in the first part of 
the Eighteenth Century, and his mother, Eliza- 
beth Kelker, was descended from an early Ger- 
man settler on the Schuylkill. The Ramseys of 
Pennsylvania were of good Scotch ancestry, 
and their blending with the sober and sturdy 
Pennsylvania Germans produced men re- 
nowned for brawn and brain, with not a dwarf, 
dastard or dullard among them. All of this 
clan were brave, industrious and thrifty peo- 
ple, well-to-do and long-to-live, and there is 
no better type of the family than the old War 
Governor. He was reared by an uncle, and in 
his young manhood worked at carpentering, 
clerked in a store and in a public office, took a 
partial collegiate course, and at twenty-two be- 
gan the study of law. In 1S:J!) he was admitted 
to the bar and entered into the practice at Har- 
risburg. He would have made a great lawyer 
had he continued steadily in the profession, 
but he had a natural taste for politics, was an 
ardent Whig, and the exciting and enthusi- 
astic presidential campaign of 1840 took him 
from the bar to the hustings, and he made 
many notable speeches and helped carry Penn- 
sylvania for Harrison and Tyler. As a sort of 
recognition of his services, he was made the 
secretary of the Stale Electoral College, in 
November, and the following January was 



elected chief clerk of the Legislature. In 1842. 
when he was but twenty-seven years of age, he 
was (he Whig nominee for Congress in a newly 
formed district, and received a majority of the 
votes; but it was decided that the district had 
been illegally formed and the election was void. 
The next year he was again nominated for the 
Twenty-eighth Congress, for the district com- 
posed of the remainder of the counties of Dau- 
phin, Lebanon and Schuylkill, and was elected. 
He was re-elected in 1844, and declined a third 
nomination in 1846. In 1848 he was chairman 
of the Whig State committee, and under his 
management of the presidential campaign, 
Pennsylvania went for Taylor and Fillmore. 
In March, 1849, soon after coming into the 
Chief Magistracy, President Taylor appointed 
his now well-known Pennsylvania partisan. 
Governor of the then newly organized Minne- 
sota Territory. Two months later he arrived 
in St. Paul, the seat of government, then a 
frontier village, and entered upon his duties. 
He was accompanied by his beautiful and ac- 
complished wife — who had been Anna Earl 
Jenks, daughter of Hon. Michael H. Jenks, her 
husband's colleague in Congress — and their ar- 
rival was an event long and pleasantly to be 
remembered. The young Governor had a great 
deal of work to do in Minnesota, much of it 
unpleasant and all of it hard. The Territory 
was full of office-seekers, place-hunters and 
speculators, all of them with schemes, and 
many of them with ''jobs. - ' He had to set the 
governmental machinery in motion and keep it 
running smoothly, and solely for the general 
welfare. He was ex officio commissioner of 
Indian affairs for Minnesota, and there were 
forty thousand Sioux and Chippewas in the 
territory, owning big provinces of land, and 
blanketed and barbaric. He read his first mes- 
sage in the dining room of a hotel to a Legisla- 
ture composed of twenty-seven members, and 
it was a paper full of good sense and of hopes 
and of fair prophecies that he lived to see re- 
alized. His administration as Territorial Gov 
ernor was most successful. He governed the 
Territory much as a Pennsylvania Dutchman 
runs a faim, working hard, keeping everything 
and everybody in order, and providing for the 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



[29 



future. In 1851 he made a treaty with the 
Sioux aud bought from them 40,000,000 acres 
of fine, fertile land, which was soon open to 
settlement. He was fair, but firm, in his deal 
ing with white men and red. He summarily 
repressed the unscrupulous palefaces, and 
when the old Sioux chief, Red Iron, became 
turbulent and insubordinate, he "broke" him 
from his chieftainship, put shackles upon him 
and threw him into the lockup, though a thou- 
sand scowling warriors were standing by. In 
1853, when the Democrats came into power, 
under President Pierce, Governor Ramsey was 
succeeded by Gen. W. A. Gorman, and became 
a private citizen of St. Paul. In 1855 he was 
elected mayor of the young city. In is." 7. 
when Minnesota was about to become a sov- 
ereign State, he was the Republican candidate 
for Governor against the late Gen. Henry II. 
Sibley, Democrat. Between Ramsey and Sib 
ley, the two most prominent characters in the 
early history of the Northwest, there was al- 
ways implacable political enmity, but devoted 
personal friendship. By a close vote, Sibley 
was declared elected Minnesota's first Gover- 
nor. But two years later, in 1859, Ramsey was 
elected, and with him Ignatius Donnelly, as 
Lieutenant Governor. When Sumter was 
tired upon. Governor Ramsey chanced to be 
in Washington. That day he waited on 
President Lincoln and offered him a thou- 
sand Minnesotans for the war, and when 
the formal call came he answered it in 
person: "Our quota is ready. Mr. Presi- 
dent." In 1801, Minnesota, young, poor, 
and very sorely troubled, sent five good regi- 
ments to the field. The next year she sent five 
more, almost stripping herself of her bravest 
and best. In August, 1862, with nearly all of 
the fighting force of the State in the South, 
the great Sioux rebellion broke out, and within 
a week nearly 800 people of the State had been 
put to the tomahawk and scalping knife and 
millions of property destroyed. Governor Ram 
sey did not flinch or fail. He put General Sib- 
ley at the head of such a force as could be or- 
ganized and sent him against the savages. 
strengthening and supporting him with all his 
power, and in forty days the rebellion had 



been subdued, hundreds of captives restored, 
and the Indians driven from the State, never 
to return. Ramsey was a splendid War Gov- 
ernor. He kept up Minnesota's quota, and 
established and maintained its reputation; he 
visited the soldiers in their camps, in Virginia 
and Mississippi, and cared for them as a father 
for his boys; he punished the Indian murder 
ers of his people, and then protected his fron- 
tiers from savage raids and from a repetition 
of anything like the scenes of August, L862, 
and all the while he was controlling the State 
successfully and advancing its development 
and civilization. In January, 1863, Governor 
Ramsey was elected I'nited States Senator 
from Minnesota, and at the close of his term 
was re-elected for six years more. During his 
twelve years of service he was prominent in 
the deliberations of the Senate, as chair- 
man of the Committee on Territories, on 
Postofflces and Post Roads, etc. The sub- 
ject of postal reform occupied much of his 
attention. It was the "Ramsey Bill" which 
first corrected the franking abuse. His visit 
to and labors in Europe in ISO!) were influen- 
tial in bringing about cheap international post 
age. The improvement of the Mississippi and 
its navigable tributaries, the aiding of the 
Northern Pacific railroad, legislation in behalf 
of the then Territories of Dakota and Montana, 
the encouragement of trade with Manitoba, 
and all other measures for the benefit of the 
Northwest were subjects of his particular care 
and effort. No member of either house hail 
better personal standing. His broad views, 
his good judgment and sagacity, his hearty 
frankness and geniality toward his associates 
gave him great popularity and influence. Sen- 
ator Ramsey's congressional career closed in 
March, 1875, and he rested from official life till 
December, 1870, when President Hayes ten- 
dered him tlie portfolio of Secretary of War. 
He accepted, and at once entered on his duties 
and gave faithful and conspicuous service un- 
til March, L881, when the Garfield administra- 
tion began. A year later, in March, 1882, there 
was enacted the "Edmunds Law," which vir- 
tually extinguished polygamy in Utah — the 
remaining "twin relic of barbarism" — and 



130 



PdOOHAPTIY OF MINNESOTA. 



created ;i commission of live officials to exe- 
cute its provisions. Senator Ramsey was 
appointed a member of the Board of Commis- 
sioners and elected its chairman. In 1800 he 
resigned and retired permanently to private 
life. Governor Ramsey has since passed his 
life in his comfortable home in St. Paul, in the 
quiet and hearty enjoyment of domestic com- 
fort, the delight of books, of the society of 
old and valued friends, and the company of 
and association with his fellow citizens. Since 
1S84 he has been a widower, and he has but 
one child, a daughter, now Mrs. Marion Ful- 
ness, who presides over his household. He is 
past eighty-four years of age, but "wears his 
manhood hale and green" and is splendidly 
preserved. He is seen on the streets every day 
in any sort of weather. He has always taken 
care of his health, and probably was never sick 
a whole day in all of his busy and eventful life. 
"That which should accompany old age. as 
honor, love, obedience, troops of friends," he 
has in plenitude. For some time he has been 
president of the Minnesota Historical Society 
and regularly attends its meetings, and is a 
leading spirit in the Old Settlers' Association. 
He is a member of the Loyal Legion and other 
organizations, and probably he attends as 
many banquets, receptions, and public meet- 
ings as any other of his fellow citizens. His 
services are in demand on every occasion 
where speeches are to be made, and his voice 
is seemingly as strong, deep and eloquent as 
when it rang upon the hustings of Pennsyl- 
vania sixty years ago or resounded through the 
halls of the Senate in 1864. He takes life easily 
and spends it sensibly, and "so should a good 
man end his days." 



DANIEL R. NOYES. 



This family of Noyes may be traced back 
genealogically from America to England, from 
England to Normandy, certain representatives 
of the early stock having crossed from France 
with William the Conqueror, and by royal 
allotment become landed proprietors in Corn- 



wall. Thence the family appeared in America 
in the person of Rev. James Noyes. a Non-con- 
formist of distinction who, in 1835, sought the 
freedom of the new world, locating at New 
bury, Massachusetts. This early settler was 
the father of Rev. James Noyes of Stonington, 
Connecticut, who gained permanent honor as 
one of the founders of Yale College. ( to the 
mother's side, likewise, Mr. Noyes can count 
a line of ancestors prominent in the church and 
as educators. Edward Dorr Griffin, D. D., 
president of Williams College, was his great 
uncle, and the tradition in the family is that 
his great grandmother was descended from 
John Rogers, the Smithtield clergyman who 
suffered martyrdom at the stake for his reli- 
gious convictions. Daniel Rogers Noyes 
is the eldest son of Daniel R. and Phoebe 
(Griffin) Noyes, and was born in the town of 
Lyme, Connecticut, on the 10th of November, 
1836. He was reared amid refining and 
strengthening home influences, enjoying, also, 
the advantages of the best New England 
schools. At the age of eighteen he went to 
New York and engaged in business, continuing 
there until the breaking out of the Civil War. 
He then entered his country's service as a vol- 
unteer, not. as it proved, for a lengthy term. 
His health became undermined, and after his 
return from the war he traveled extensively, 
his journeyings, which covered a period of sev- 
eral years, including visits to points of special 
interest both in America and abroad. Upon 
the completion of this health-seeking tour, he 
resumed business as a partner in the banking- 
house of Gilman, Son & Company, New York 
City. Mr. Noyes' residence in St. Paul dates 
from 1808, and his thirty odd years in this 
community show a record of unceasing activity 
and achievement. During the first year he 
founded the wholesale drug house of Noyes, 
Tett & Company, now the leading drug house 
of the Northwest, operating under the style of 
Noyes Brothers & Cutler, with Daniel R. Noyes 
as senior partner. The business of this house 
has become extended, not only into surround 
ing States, but to those bordering the Pacific, 
while it is known in both Europe and Asia 
through its exportatious of certain classes of 





^ 




*y 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



131 



supplies to those countries. Mr. Noyes has also 
important manufacturing interests in St. Paul, 
and lias been officially identified with many of 
the city's enterprises. To him, together with 
others, the St. Paul Business and Jobbers' 
Unions owe their existence. While always re- 
fusing political place and preferment, Air. 
Noyes has served as president of the Jobbers' 
Union; also as president of the Chamber of 
Commerce. With the St. Paul Trust Company 
he is now associated as vice-president, and he 
is a member of the board of directors of the 
Merchants' National Bank. It is to Mr. Xoyes 
that St. Paul is indebted for her Relief ' Society, 
and as its treasurer he has wisely administered 
its finances from its organization. He has been 
a zealous worker in the Young Men's Christian 
Association, having formerly officiated as pres- 
ident of that body, and chairman of its State 
work as well. He is a member of the board of 
trustees of Carlton College. Largely owing to 
his influence and effort the city came to pos- 
sess its Government building, its Market Hall 
and Como Park. The Ice Palace and Winter 
Carnival, too, originating as propositions of 
.Mi'. Noyes, have been, as it were, reduced to 
cold facts. Nor are his activities merely local. 
He is a member of the Century Club of New- 
York City — as well as of the home clubs, The 
Minnesota and Town and Country clubs — also 
of the National Social Science Association; 
and he was formerly president of the National 
Wholesale Druggists' Association, and a direc- 
tor for many years of the New York Equitable 
Life Assurance Society. In legislative affairs, 
both of the State and Nation, Mr. Noyes has 
been prominent and influential, particularly in 
such as concerned bankruptcy, tariff, revenue 
and transportation. He was among the ear- 
nest advocates of our present equitable nation- 
al law regulating bankruptcy; the repeal of 
I he earlier Stamp Tax was effected through a. 
movement of which he was the mainspring, 
and he has labored faithfully for the establish- 
ment of some measure of government control 
of our railroads. He is gratefully accredited 
by Minnesota as the author of some of her sal 
utary laws for the prevention of cruelty, and 
has been for twentv-five years continuously 



president of the State society organized in this 
cause. Mr. Noyes is a ready speaker and 
forcible writer — bright in repartee, yet earnest 
in purpose. The domestic side of Air. Noyes' 
life has been equally successful. On December 
J. lsfiii, he was married to Miss Helen Oilman, 
daughter of Winthrop Sargent Gilman, Esq.. 
of New York City. Of their five living children 
the three daughters are: Mrs. (Prof.) William 
Adams Brown, id' New York; Mrs. Saltus, of 
Paris, and Miss Noyes; their two sons: Win 
throp S. G. Noyes, of St. Paul, and D. Ray- 
mond Noyes. now attending the St. Paul's 
school at Concord, New Hampshire. The fine 
Noyes residence is situated on Summit avenue, 
overlooking the Mississippi; and as its owner 
is seen at home, hospitable, hale and hearty, 
he seems as one whom all misfortune has 
passed by. Yet, free as is this sketch from any 
tinge of sadness, we know there are hours 
when each life is brooded over by dark wings. 
Mr. Noyes has known years of illness and nec- 
essary retirement from active effort. These 
years were spent in study and travel and were 
not lost. In lives like that of Mr. Noyes often 
the glad consciousness of having done well lies 
side by side with the saddening thought of 
partial accomplishment and much still to do. 
Put this is a grief that has no sting and leaves 
no poison in the heart. 



JOHN IRELAND. 

No history of the Northwest is complete, no 
picture of Minnesota is adequate, that fails to 
show the heroic figure of the Most Reverend 
John Ireland, Archbishop of St. Paul, clearly in 
the foreground. He has for half a century lived 
in the Territory and State, and has grown with 
its growth. He was born in Ireland, Septem- 
ber 11, 1838, son of Richard Ireland, a contrac- 
tor and builder, an honest man. a useful 
citizen. At the age id' eleven years he emi- 
grated with his parents and other members of 
the family to the United States, stopping some 
time in Burlington, Vermont, and Chicago, Ill- 
inois. In 1852 the family settled in St. Paul 
for a permanent residence. Here his father 
died in 1887 and his mother in 1895, and here 



13- 



PIOOPAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



is slill the borne of the son who has attained 
greal distinction as a citizen and a prelate. 
In L853 young Ireland went to France to prose- 
cute his classical and theological studies as a 
preparation for the ministry in the Catholic 
Church. This work of scholastic preparation 
occupied eight full years — lour of which were 
spent at Meximieux in the department of Ain. 
and four at Hyeres, in the department of Var. 
Upon the completion of his theological course 
he returned home, and was ordained a priest 
at St. Paul, December 21, 1861, by Bishop 
Grace. Me was young, vigorous, thoroughly 
American, and intensely patriotic. It was 
therefore most natural and praiseworthy that 
he should offer his services to the Government 
at the time of its greatest peril, and consecrate 
his holy calling anew, by ministering to the 
comfort of the volunteer soldiers and bringing 
to them in extremity the consolations of reli- 
gion. In June. 1862, he received a commission 
as chaplain of the Fifth Regiment, Minnesota 
Volunteers, and joined the regiment in camp 
at Corinth. Mississippi. He was courage and 
devotion in the army, braving every danger, 
performing every duty, adapting his ministry 
to the wants of his comrades and fulfilling 
the high demands of patriotism in the march 
and the siege and the battle. He was with his 
regiment in the bloody battle of Corinth and 
in all subsequent engagements, until seven' 
and long-continued illness rendered further 
service impossible. Having tendered his resig- 
nation in April, lst;:;. he returned home and 
was assigned to the pastorate of the Cathedral 
parish, St. Paul, where he labored for several 
years. In recognition of his marked abilities 
and conspicuous services he was, in 1ST."), ap- 
pointed Titular Bishop of Moronea and Apos- 
tolic Vicar of Nebraska by the Sovereign 
Pontiff, but on the request of Bishop Grace 
this appointment was withdrawn and that of 
the Coadjutor of the See of St. Paul substi 
tuted. His consecration to the latter office 
i..ok place December 21. 1875. So it will be 
seen he was ordained a priest in December and 
consecrated to the solemn duties of the higher 
office in the same month, just fourteen years 
from the dav of his ordination. In the limited 



space available for the biography of one man 
in a single volume containing so many, it is 
impossible to sketch adequately a life so full, 
so varied in its work and so conspicuous in 
achievement as that of Archbishop Ireland. 
The merest outline and the briefest mention 
of the most important events must suffice; but 
these are sufficient to suggest the character 
and measure of the man. One of the grandesl 
and most far-reaching in its results among the 
acts of his early ministry was the institution 
of the Catholic Total Abstinence Society in 
Minnesota, which was organized in 1869. He 
stood for total abstinence from intoxicating 
liquors as the best protection of the home and 
the safeguard of manhood. From the small 
enrolment in that first organization Hi" mem 
bership of the society has increased to many 
thousands in the State, and its blessings will 
extend to many generations in the ages to 
come. Another beneficent act of inestimable 
value was his purchase of thousands of acres 
id' the cheap and fertile lands of Minnesota, 
whose settlement he effected, by serving prac- 
tically as emigrant agent. His scheme of 
colonization served to establish many settlers 
and to add millions to the productive capital 
and labor of the State. His life has been full 
of useful work for the improvement and eleva- 
tion of mankind; for the promotion of popular 
education and the establishment of Christian- 
ity in the land. In the fore rank of ecclesiastics, 
he has at all times lent his influence, by the 
inspiration of his oratory, the clear, crisp, con- 
vincing argument of his pen. and the influence 
of his personal example, supported all progres- 
sive movements in the local community, the 
State and the Nation. To the assembled teach 
ers of the common schools he saiil in a public 
address: "Palsied be the arm that is raised 
against free popular education." In another 
address before the Loyal Legion, referring to 
the alleged "race problem," he said: "There 
is no race problem. Justice knows no color 
line." Concerning the great railroad strike of 
1894, he said in an interview: 

"I dislike to speak of the Chicago strike. 
because in doing so I shall blame labor, where 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA 



133 



as because of my deep sympathy with it, I 
should wish to have none but words of praise 
for it. Yet, in a momentous social crisis such 
as l he one through which we are passing, it is 
a duty to speak loud and to make the avowal 
of the truths and principles which will save 
society and uphold justice, and I am glad of 
the opportunity which a representative of the 
press affords ine. The fatal mistake which has 
been made in connection with this strike is 
thai property has been destroyed, the liberty 
of citizens interfered with, human lives endan- 
gered, social order menaced, the institutions 
and freedom of the country put in most serious 
jeopardy. The moment such things happen, 
all possible questions as to the rights and 
grievances of labor must be dropped out of 
sight, and all efforts of law-abiding citizens 
and of public officials made to serve in main- 
taining public order and guarding at all cost 
the public weal. Labor must learn that how- 
ever sacred its rights be, there is something 
above them and absolutely supreme — social 
order and the laws of public justice. There 
is no civil crime as hideous and as pregnant 
of evil results as resistance to law and the 
constitutional authority of the country. This 
resistance is revolution; it begets chaos; it 
is anarchy; it disrupts the whole social fabric 
which insures the safety of the poor as well 
as of the rich, to the employe as well as to 
the employer. There can lie no hesitation to 
bring in the repressive powers of society when 
property is menaced. Only savages, or men 
who for the time being are turned into sav- 
ages, will burn or destroy property, whether 
it be the factory of the rich man or the poor 
man's cottage, a railroad car or a national 
building. .More criminal and more inexcusable 
yet. is the aci of murdering human beings, or 
of endangering their lives. Labor, too, niusl 
learn the lesson that the liberty of the citizens 
is to be respected. One man has the right to 
cease from work, but he has no light to drive 
another man from work. He who respects not 
the liberty of others shows himself unworthy 
of his own liberty and incapable of citizenship 
in a free country. Never can riots and mob 
rule and lawless depredations be tolerated. 
The country that permits them signs its death 
warrant." 

When the l.exow committee entered upon the 
investigation which exposed tin' corrupt meth- 
ods of Tammany Hall, and the infamous prac- 
tices of its police force, he supported the 
reform party with all the force of his elo- 
quence. And so at all times and in all places 



he stands for whatever is just and honorable 
in government, whatever is pure, elevating and 
progressive in social or community life, what- 
ever is honest, sincere, upright, generous, no- 
ble and of good report in the individual. 
Archbishop Ireland is what Governor Roose- 
velt would call a "strenuous man." His whole 
life is devoted to lifting up and improving thi 
condition, the character and the spirit of the 
larger community life, whether his energies 
are employed in the church, through the clergy 
or in the secular world. The scope of his 
genius is evidenced by the wonderful variety 
of its operations. To-day he delivers an ad- 
dress in behalf of higher education and takes 
the initial step to found a university; to-mor- 
row he addresses a public meeting called to 
promote a railroad, and lends his influence to 
the active, earnest support of a public move 
nteiit whose importance is unquestioned; be- 
tween days he is found in charitable work, 
relieving the wants of the humble poor. Yes 
terday he was called to Rome to confer with 
His Holiness the Pope; returning, he was in- 
vited to Washington to confer with the Presi- 
dent on affairs of State. His platform lectures 
cover a great variety of subjects. Everywhere, 
at all times, he is busy, speaking, teaching, 
winking — always for some useful and worthy 
end, and without neglecting ecclesiastic duties. 
On the occasion of Chicago's great interna- 
tional carnival, in October. 1899, the Arch- 
bishop, as a banquet guest of the Marquette 
club, responded to a toast. "The American 
Republic.'" Brief extracts from this will suf- 
fice to illustrate the trend of his thought and 
t he quality of his oratory: 

"Material prosperity belongs to us as to no 
other people. The Author of Nature made the 
Western Continent so opulent that under any 
form of government the people of America 
should prosper. But not only did no barrier 
to our prosperity arise from a Republican 
form of government; but this form, T am sure, 
has contributed much to it, by the impetus it 
a H'ords to individualism and personal initia- 
tive, by the sense of dignity and the conse- 
quent ambition il creates in every human soul, 
by the equal recognition of law given to aspira- 
tions and efforts from whatever social stratum 



'34 



l'.IOOKAI'HY OF .MINNESOTA. 



they spring. It matters little to me what the 
difficulties arc that arc said to confront us; 
be they political, social or industrial — I have 
no fear. I trust the great good sense of the 
people; I trust the power of American publii 
opinion; I trust the freedom of the Republic, 
which allows healthful discussion; I trust 
American justice and American respect for 
human rights, born of American democracy. 
to solve iii due time every problem and remove 
every peril. With time for reflection, the peo- 
ple will proclaim the reign of justice and of 
charity. I fear only the effects of momentary 
passion and the rashness it occasions. Hence 
the motto of Americans should be patience and 
prudence, and meanwhile energetic and unsel- 
fish work for country and for humanity, for 
righteousness and for God. * * * * The 
American Republic! She lives and liberty lives 
with her. The flag of the American Republic 
means liberty. Wherever it goes, liberty goes 
wit h it. With anxious eye and throbbing heart 
we watch to-day the journeying of the Haj; of 
America toward distant isles; we pray for its 
safety and its honor; we proclaim that in Asia 
as in America it means liberty and all the 
blessings thai go with liberty. Some say — it 
means in Asia the repression of liberty. God 
forbid! It means in Asia the institution of 
civil order, so that America, to whom the fates 
of war have brought the unsought duty of 
maintaining order in those isles, may see and 
know who are the people of the Philippines; 
who there have the righl to speak for the peo- 
ple, what the people desire and for what the 
people are fitted. Civil order restored — and it 
must be restored — the flag of America may be 
trusted to be for the Philippines the harbinger 
and the guardian of the liberty and the rights 
of the people. The American Republic! She 
will live, and with her liberty will live." 

In profound scholarship, in (he variety and 
accuracy of historical information, in famil- 
iarity with church polity, he is the equal of 
lite most learned prelate in the land, in the 
practical knowledge of affairs, in the intimacy 
of social intercourse with statesmen, in the 
confidential relations with the administration 
of the National Government, he is foremost 
amongst them all. lie is first a man, broad, 
strong, independent; intensely American in his 
love and pride of nationality; cosmopolitan in 
familiar intercourse and knowledge of men; 



catholic in spirit, in sympathy, in methods of 
work to accomplish reforms. He accepts truth 
in any guise, wherever found; he comprehends 
its universal aspect. He believes Christianity 
is progressive; that it adapts itself to condi- 
tions, to social position, to every phase of life 
and tn ethical, economic and political prob- 
lems. His active interest in affairs attests his 
belief that a prelate is not absolved from the 
duties of citizenship; but rather impelled by 
a high sense of duty to employ his activities 
and his influence in support of public policies 
which he believes to be right and expedient. 
His tolerance in matters of religion is ex- 
pressed in the Constitution of the United 
States — liberty in form of worship and impar- 
tial protection to worshipers — and therefore 
believes that for America the separation of 
Church and State is wise. Instead of the im- 
plication of hostility in such separation he 
finds abundant evidences of accord, reciprocal 
esteem and mutual helpfulness. Archbishop 
Ireland has remarkable power for doing things, 
and one of the sources of that power is found 
in his discriminating judgment in the selection 
of instrumentalities, his tact in choosing the 
right man for a particular position or work. 
This is a manifestation of the highest exec- 
utive ability. His capacity is multiplied by 
his method of working through others, wisely 
chosen. His love of the human race is so per- 
vasive as to exclude race prejudice and inspire 
a consciousness that working for humanity is 
the highest form of serving God. His stal- 
wart and symmetrical physical proportions 
suggest great strength and endurance, and at 
the same time generous impulses and large 
sympathies. He encourages the aspirations of 
the ambitious and supports the efforts of the 

I r and the weak to improve their condition. 

A worthy companion of the great and power 
ful, he is equally the friend of the humble who 
need assistance, characteristic independence 
of thoughl and boldness of expression, not in 
consistent with a high regard for the canons 
and dignitaries of the church, enlarges the 
sphere of his influence. Active performance 
of civic duties, public spirited promotion of 
secular enterprises, earnest advocacy of social 







tfo. ^XCo-^d^yU t^i 



I'.KXiKAl'IIV OF MINNESOTA. 



135 



reforms and a higher, purer individual life, 
and the advisory relationship with rulers, add 
to his dignity and eminent usefulness. 



WILLIAM 1>. WASHBURN. 

It is the privilege of few citizens of any com- 
monwealth to exercise as wide an influence 
upon its affairs, and to touch its life at so many 
points, as has William Drew Washburn in his 
more than forty years' residence in Minnesota. 
Coming here as a pioneer, before Statehood 
had been attained, he lias been a part of the 
wonderful development of four decades — has 
seen the State change from a mere scattered 
group of frontier settlements to a well peopled 
community holding a leading position in agri- 
culture, manufactures and commerce, and the 
village in which he made his home, in 1857, 
become the chief city of the State. Through 
this period of evolution Mr. Washburn lias 
been a forceful influence in most of those lines 
of endeavor which have made the State and 
city so conspicuously successful. He was early 
identified with the improvement of the water 
power which became the nucleus of the man- 
ufacturing greatness of Minneapolis, and no 
one was more influential in fostering and pro- 
moting the manufactures of the new Stale both 
by wise encouragement and by example. Later 
lie became interested, also, in other lines of 
business, and took a most prominent part. 
through railroad construction, in opening the 
lines of commerce. During his long business 
career he has had a pari in the financial ami 
investment interests of the city and State, and 
in the later manufacturing enterprises. Organ- 
ized public work has found in him a leader and 
supporter at all times. Mr. Washburn's activ- 
ity in the promotion of public interests had 
much to do with his political successes, and 
in political life he lias been peculiarly fortu- 
nate in supplementing his other labors by 
giving In the Northwest some of its most im- 
portant public works. In the course of his 
public career Mr. Washburn has been a factor 
in local. State and National politics — affecting 
Minnesota life from every possible political 



standpoint. And while the State has felt his 
influence in all these diverse directions, his 
own city has been aware of his presence as a 
constant force in more social questions; in 
such matters as public and private charities, 
education, the church, the improvement of the 
city, the maintenance of lofty standards in 
those things which make for the higher life of 
the community. In democratic America, where 
ancestry counts for lint little as a factor in 
success, there is still a just cause for worthy 
pride in descent from those who made Amer- 
ican conditions possible, or in family relation 
with men who have been conspicuous in the 
service of the Nation. As a descendant of old 
Pilgrim stock, and as one of a group of broth- 
ers who constituted perhaps the most distin- 
guished family contemporaneously in public 
life in I he United States. Mr. Washburn might 
be pardoned for a large degree of family pride. 
The first Washburns in America were John 
Washburn, secretary of the council of Ely 
mouth, and his son John, who came to this 
country with him. The latter married Eliza- 
beth Mitchell, the daughter of Experience 
Mitchell and Jane Cook, and granddaughter of 
Francis Cook, who came over in the Mayflower 
in 1620. The family had originally lived, prob- 
ably for many generations, in the village of 
Evesham, not far from Stratford on Avon, in 
one of the most beautiful parts of England. 
Israel Washburn, born in list, was directly 
descended from these Puritan ancestors. His 
father served in Hie Revolution, as did the 
father of his wife. Martha Benjamin, whom he 
married in 1812. Mrs. Washburn's father was 
Lieut. Samuel Benjamin, a patriot of whose 
valor and persistence in his country's cause 
it need only lie said that he participated in the 
Battle of Lexington and fought through the 
whole war to Yorktown, where he was present 
at the surrender of Lord Cornwallis. Few of 
the soldiers who fought for American inde- 
pendence saw, as did Lieutenant Benjamin, the 
first and lasl battles of the great struggle. 
Israel and Martha Washburn made their home 
on a farm in Livermore, .Maine, and it was 
here thai their large family was reared. To 
the parents' influence, to the stern training of 



136 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



farm life in the Maine "hark woods," to the 
inheritance of patriotism and love of achieve- 
ment, and to their own steadfast endeavor, is 
due in very large measure the wonderful suc- 
cess of the group of boys born in this Maine 
farm home. There was little of material ad- 
vantage to be found surrounding these hoys 
during their early life. The father was no 
more successful than the average New Eng- 
land farmer, 1ml he was an alert, intelligent 
man, a reader, a man of hard common sense 
and with the largest ambit inns to give to his 
sons every opportunity for success. Of the 
mother it is said that she "was a practical 
housekeeper, industrious, frugal, sagacious, 
stimulating to the children's consciences, sin- 
cerely religious withal, and hence gave those 
under her precious charge an unalterable bent 
towards pure and lofty ends." It was in such 
a home that eleven children were born, of 
whom the seven sons have achieved worthy 
prominence in public life. In his "Triumphant 
Democracy" Andrew Carnegie says of this 
group of men: 

"Their career is typically American. The 
Washburns are a family indeed, seven sons, 
and all of them men of mark.' Several of them 
have distinguished themselves so greatly as to 
become a part of their country's history. The 
family record includes a Secretary of State, 
two Governors, four Members of Congress, a 
major general in the army and another second 
in command in the navy. Two served as For- 
eign Ministers, two as State Legislators, and 
one as Surveyor General. As all these services 
were performed during the Civil War, there 
were Washburns in nearly every department 
of State, laboring cam]) and council for the 
Republic, at the sacrifice of great personal 
interests." 

As the youngest child in the family. William 
D. Washburn had, in addition to the influence 
of his parents, the stimulation of the example 
of his brothers who were already entering pub- 
lic life while he was a school boy. Israel 
Washburn. Jr., was elected to Congress in 
1850, when William, who was born in 1831, 
was but nineteen years of age. The young men 
had already become prominent in Maine State 
politics, and Israel, after serving four terms 



in Congress, was elected War Governor of his 
native State. Elihu B. Washburn served as 
Congressman from Illinois from 185:! to I860, 
when he was appointed Secretary of State by 
President Grant. During the Franco-Prussian 
war h<' was Minister Plenipotentiary to 
France. Cadwallader C. Washburn was in 
Congress both before and after the war. was 
a general in the Union army, and in 1871 was 
elected Governor of Wisconsin. Charles A. 
Washburn was minister to Paraguay; Samuel 
I!. Washburn was a distinguished officer in the 
navy. Beyond what has been said of his early 
influences there was little that was distinctive 
about the boyhood of Mr. Washburn. It was 
the common experience of the son of a New- 
England farmer — the district school in the 
winter and farm work in the summer. As he 
grew old enough to take a heavier part in the 
farming, the school months of the year became 
fewer. Short terms at a village "high school" 
and neighboring academies supplemented the 
district school experiences, and finally at 
Farinington Academy he was able to prepare 
for college. In the year 1850, when he was 
nineteen, he entered Bowdoin College — that 
honored alma mater of such men as Haw 
thorne, Longfellow, William 1'. Fessemlen. 
President Franklin Pierce, Chief Justice Ful- 
ler, Senator John P. Hale. General O. O. How 
ard and Thomas B. Reed — and graduated four 
years later with the bachelor's degree, after 
completing a full classical course. The suc- 
ceeding three years were devoted to the study 
of law in the office of his brother, Israel Wash 
burn. Jr.. and with Judge John A. Peters, now 
and for many years past Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court of Maine. During this period 
he spent part of his time in Washington per- 
forming the duties of a clerk in the House of 
Representatives, where he obtained his first 
acquaintance with the affairs of Congress and 
with the public men of that time. Two id' Mr. 
Washburn's brothers had already made their 
home in the West, and upon completing his 
law studies he determined to follow their ex- 
ample. It was not difficult to decide upon a 
location. I iverinore had already sent men to 
the Falls of St. Anthony, and his brothers. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



137 



Elilm and Cadwallader, had acquired interests 
there iiiid elsewhere in Minnesota. 11 seemed 
a place with ;i greater future than any other 
western sett lenient. The young man believed 
thai he saw in it a held worthy of his energies; 
but it is hardly probable that his highest 
flights of fancy pictured the Minneapolis of 
today as a possibility during his own life- 
time. On May 1, 1857, Mr. Washburn reached 
Minneapolis and shortly after opened a law 
office. The contrast between the town in which 
he settled and the city of today is striking. 
The population was then perhaps 12.000 as com- 
pared with over 200,000 in 1899; there were 
about two hundred buildings of all kinds in 
the village, and few of them were worth more 
than $1,000. There were no railroads, and the 
great manufacturing industries of the present 
time were represented by one or two small 
mills. Into this scattered collection of frame 
buildings there was pouring, however, a stream 
of immigrants, and speculation and building 
were keeping the people busy. There seemed 
every prospect of coming prosperity. But that 
stability necessary for security during finan- 
cial difficulties had not been attained, and the 
same summer saw such reverses as to make 
the outlook very dismal. Mr. Washburn ar- 
rived just in time to experience, with the town 
of his choice, all the troubles of the panic of 
1857. There was little law business to be hail, 
and soon after his arrival he became the seen 
tary and agent of the Minneapolis Mill Com- 
pany — the corporation controlling the west 
side power at the Falls of St. Anthony. This 
was a most fortunate appointment for Minne- 
apolis as well as Mr. Washburn. It brought 
into immediate exercise in behalf of the vil- 
lage those extraordinary executive faculties 
which have ever since been so continuously 
devoted to the interests of the city. To Mr. 
Washburn it gave the opportunity for famil- 
iarizing himself with the possibilities of manu- 
facturing at the falls, which was the basis of 
his future success. Later generations in Minne- 
apolis are entirely unfamiliar with the extent 
of the debt of the city to Mr. Washburn, in- 
curred during these early days. With thai 
characteristic energy and determination which 



has since become so well known to the people 
of the city, he commenced the improvement of 
the power controlled by his company. During 
1857 the original dam on the west side was 
built — this in the midst of great financial em- 
barrassments. It was a tremendous struggle, 
a great load to be laid on the shoulders of a 
man then but twenty-six years of age. But 
dam and raceway were finally completed. The 
young agent shrewdly guessed, however, that 
his battle was only half won. On the east side 
of tlie river there was a better power with 
more eligible mill sites; but the policy of its 
managers discouraged new enterprises. Mr. 
Washburn decided that the west side works 
must have mills, and he at once adopted a lib- 
eral policy and leased mill powers, now com- 
manding a yearly rental of $1,500, as low as 
$133 per annum, to persons who would estab- 
lish mills. The plan worked admirably. 
Everyone knows now how the Hour mills gath- 
ered about the west side raceway until there 
was built up the greatest group in the whole 
world. Until the industries at the falls were 
put upon a firm foundation, Mr. Washburn re- 
mained the agent of the company, and he has 
always maintained a large interest in it. He 
has never been out of touch with the manufac- 
turing interests of the State since that first 
summer's work at the Falls of St. Anthony. 
Receiving, in 1861, the appointment of Sur- 
veyor General at the hands of President Lin- 
coln, it became necessary for Mr. Washburn 
to remove to St. Paul for a time. It was while 
in this office that his friends acquired the habit 
of prefixing the title "General" to his name; 
a custom so well established that it has con- 
tinued through all the various offices which 
he has held. While Surveyor General, Mr. 
Washburn became familiar with the timber re- 
sources of the State, and, purchasing consid- 
erable tracts, afterwards engaged extensively 
in the lumber business. He formed the firm of 
W. I>. Washburn & Co., built a saw mill at the 
falls, and later one at Anoka, and until 1889 
carried on a very large lumber business. In 
1ST:! he entered (lour milling, and speedily be- 
came an important factor in the production of 
that Minneapolis staple. His interests in flour 



138 



P.IOOPAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



manufacturing were through the original firm 
of \V. ]). Washburn .V: Co. and Washburn, 
Crosby & Co. The firm of W. D. Washburn 
& Co. subsequently, in lsst, was merged in the 
Washburn Mill Company, and in 1889 the flour 
milling division of this business was consoli- 
dated with the Pillsbury interests in the Pills- 
bury- Washburn Flour .Mills Company, forming 
the largest flour milling corporation in i li<- 
world. At (his time there were large acces- 
sions of English capital, bu1 Mr. Washburn re- 
tained — as he does a1 lliis time — a large inter- 
est, and has been cunt inuously one of the hoard 
of American directors of the properties. The 
Minneapolis Mill Company was also consoli- 
dated with the new corporation which after 
wards completed the work of harnessing the 
power of St. Anthony Falls by the construc- 
tion of a new dam and power house a short 
distance below the main falls. This rapid 
sketching of what would seem a life work for 
any man, gives, however, hut one side of the 
business activities of Mr. Washburn — his inter- 
est in developing the two leading industries of 
Minnesota. It has been said id' one of tin- 
greatest of Englishmen that while many men 
"think in parishes" and a few "think in na- 
tions," he "thinks in continents." Applying 
this thought to business it might be said that 
while many men think in single lines of trade, 
a few think in the broad lines of general man- 
ufacturing or jobbing, while only a very lim- 
ited number think through the whole question 
of producing, distributing, financing and trans- 
porting. To the latter class Mr. Washburn be- 
longs, lie has, from time to time, and very 
much of the time, had considerable interest 
in the financial institutions of Minneapolis, in 
wholesale trade, in real-estate. Bui aside from 
his influence in the development of manufac- 
turing his most conspicuous undertakings, and 
those in which the public has been most inter- 
ested, have been the ureal railroad projects 
which he has successfully consummated. The 
early railroad system of the State had devel- 
oped along such lines thai Mr. Washburn, with 

other Minneapolis business men. felt the n 1 

of a railroad running towards the south, which 
would afford transportation direct to Minne- 



apolis, anil which should be controlled in the 
interests of Minneapolis. The result was the 
Minneapolis & St. Louis railroad carried 
through, during the seventies, very largely by 
the efforts of .Mi-. Washburn, who was its presi 
dent for some time. The end desired having 
been accomplished, he retired from the man- 
agement, and early in the eighties commenced 
to agitate the subject of a line direct to tide- 
water and completely independent of the 
domination of Chicago interests. The project 
was a startling one — fascinating by its very 
audacity; to build five hundred miles through 
an unsettled wilderness to a connection with a 
foreign railroad — to do this to free the city 
from the detrimental effects of combinations 
in the interests of competitors! To be finan- 
cially successful the projected railroad must 
depend largely upon its through business, and 
that (dass of business must be mostly export 
flour and wheat — and Minneapolis flour ex- 
porting had then but partially developed. Put 
there was a Washburn behind the plan — and 
it went through. The road was built in five 
years — the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. 
Marie. And, since, it has been extended west- 
ward through Minnesota and North Dakota to 
another connection with the Canadian Pacific, 
thus giving Minneapolis another transconti- 
nental line. Mr. Washburn was president of 
I he "Soo" line during its construction and until 
his election to the Senate, lie still retains 
large interests and has been continuously a 
director. In fact, the Soo line without Mr. 
Washburn would he, to use the familiar simile, 
like the play id' Hamlet with Hamlet left out. 
After a dozen years of the enjoyment of the 
benefits derived from the Soo ( 'anadian con- 
in (lion Willi thi' East, the people of Minnesola 
have come, perhaps, to accept it unthinkingly 
and without remembering the tremendous dif- 
ficulties which ils construction involved, or the 
splendid energy and ability with which ils 
child' promoter carried out the project. Gen- 
eral Washburn's commercial activities con 
liinie. his penchant for pioneering finding 
abundant scope jusl now in the development of 
a I rail of some 115,000 acres of land in North 
Dakota through which he is building a rail- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA 



1 3'J 



road. Those qualities in Mr. Washburn which 
hare made him a successful railroad builder, 
a great manufacturer and a shrewd developer 
of new country have contributed in large meas- 
ure to his success in political life. The ability 
to "think in continents'' marks the successful 
man in public life as certainly as it does the 
winner in business. A broad conception of the 
commercial needs of the Northwest and a well 
developed creative faculty, together with those 
qualities of mind and manner which aid in 
controlling and winning men, made Mr. Wash- 
burn unusually successful in his public service 
to the State and Nation. He was first 
called to hold office in 1858, when he 
was elected to the Minnesota Legisla- 
ture, then a newcomer in the State and but 
twenty-seven years of age. Three years later he 
received from President Lincoln the appoint- 
ment of Surveyor General of Minnesota. In 
18G6 he was chosen to the school board of 
Minneapolis, and assisted in the early devel- 
opment of the school system so prized by the 
people of the city. The year 1871 found him 
again in the State Legislature, using his rap 
idly growing influence in the support of legis- 
lation looking to State supervision and control 
of railroads. By this time it was conceded 
that he was to take a foremost position in 
Minnesota politics, and in 1873 his friends 
nearly secured his nomination for Governor of 
the State. After the decisive vote in the con- 
vention it was claimed by Mr. Washburn's 
friends that two ballots had not been counted. 
These would have changed the result, but Mr. 
Washburn refused to contest the nomination. 
In 1878 he commenced six years of continuous 
service in Congress, terminating only when he 
declined renomination for the fourth term on 
account of his intention to concentrate his at- 
tention upon the Soo railroad project, which 
he had just then commenced. The completion 
of the Soo line in 1888 made it possible for 
him to withdraw from executive management 
of the enterprise and become a candidate for 
the United States Senate, to which office he 
was chosen in the following year. Again, in 
1895, he was a candidate, but was not elected. 
Trusting in the very positive assurances of 



even those who afterwards opposed him, thai 
there would be no opposition to his candidacy, 
he had confidently expected re-election, and 
frankly admitted his great disappointment. He 
would, under no circumstances, have reap- 
peared as a candidate had he known of the 
opposition which was to develop. In this as in 
all cases where he has not been "on top" in a 
political struggle, Mr. Washburn quietly ac- 
cepted the situation ; he has never been a "sore 
head" or posed as a disgruntled politician. 
When Mr. Washburn went into Congress in 
1878 he was equipped for service as no other 
Northwestern representative had ever been. 
To a wide acquaintance with public men and a 
familiarity with methods and usages at Wash- 
ington, he added a thorough knowledge of the 
country which he was to represent — not only 
a political knowledge, but also a comprehen- 
sive view of its commercial needs. As has 
been said, he had been largely instrumental in 
developing the two great manufacturing indus 
tries of the State, and, with twenty years of 
study, was familiar, in the minutest details, 
with their requirements in the way of trans- 
portation, development of power and supply 
of raw materials. It had been his pleasure as 
well as a necessity of his business to study ag- 
ricultural conditions. He saw the interdepend- 
ence of all the interests of the Northwest, and 
grasped the great principles which have since 
been generally recognized as underlying the 
permanent prosperity of Minnesota and the 
neighboring States. In Congress he set about 
working out the fulfillment of ideas which had 
been gradually taking form, and the accom- 
plishments of the twenty years since he en- 
tered that body have been prolific in the fruit 
of the score of years of earlier experience and 
study. As far back as 1860 Mr. Washburn had 
conceived the plan of impounding the flood 
waters of the upper Mississippi river in great 
reservoirs near the headwaters. It was an 
adaptation of the plan in use on the Merrimac 
river in New England. But it was far more 
comprehensive in form and had four purposes 
in view, where the New England scheme had 
but one. Mr. Washburn had observed the de- 
structive work of the floods in the Mississippi 



140 



MIOGKAIMIY OF MINNESOTA. 



and the contrast afforded by the periods of 
extreme low water, when navigation was se- 
riously impeded. To mitigate the floods and at 
the same time save the surplus of water for 
use in seasons of drouth was the central 
thought. Iiut all the results were not fur the 
benefit of navigation and the protection (if 
farmers along the river banks. There was a 
large traffic in logs on the river. The naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi by the common saw-log 
was quite as important as that of the steamer. 
To save the logs from being swept away by 
floods or "hung up" on sand bars in low water 
was an important part of the impounding 
scheme. Again, the water of the Mississippi 
was used for power at Minneapolis and other 
points. In flood times vast quantities of water 
went to waste; in low water seasons the vol- 
ume was not sufficient for the needs of the 
mills. An equalization of the flow was thus 
of the greatest importance to navigation, the 
farmers, the loggers, and the manufacturers. 
Having the project in mind as one sure to be 
realized some day, Mr. Washburn, in 18(39, 
purchased of the Government the forty acres 
at Pokegama Falls, on the upper Mississippi 
river, which his judgment told him would be 
required for the key of the system. When the 
project was finally approved and entered upon, 
Mr. Washburn conveyed this land to the Gov- 
ernment without charge. It was ten years 
after his conception of the plan that Mr. Wash- 
burn commenced his campaign in Congress. 
Like all projects calling for large appropria- 
tions, it required persistent endeavor; but 
finally he had the satisfaction of seeing the 
system of dams and reservoirs completed — a 
system which has been of untold benefit to the 
interests above mentioned. Early in his Con- 
gressional career he also commenced to give 
careful attention to the needs of navigation 
upon the Mississippi from the standpoint of 
direct improvements of the channel, and se- 
cured many appropriations for the work on the 
upper river. He laid the foundations for the 
appropriations for the locks and dams imme- 
diately below Minneapolis, which, when com 
pleted, will give Minneapolis direct navigation 
to the gulf and all the great tributaries of the 



Mississippi. But there were still broader ques- 
tions under consideration. Mr. Washburn had 
a keen appreciation of the relations of the 
Great Lakes to the commercial development of 
the Northwest. He saw distinctly that this 
greal water route to and from the seaboard 
was the key to the commercial problem of his 
State. Cheap transportation would make pos- 
sible such a development (if farming and manu- 
facturing as had never been conceived of. To 
secure the cheapest transportation, however, 
there must be free and unobstructed channels 
through the lake system of such depth that 
vessels of modern build might pass without de- 
tention. And so, as a member of the commit- 
tee of commerce, Mr. Washburn secured the 
first appropriation for the improvement of the 
Hay Lake channel in the Sault Ste. Marie river 
— the beginning of the great ''twenty-foot" 
project which has since made possible the 
navigation of the lakes by a fleet of vessels 
carrying a commerce unequaled on any water- 
way in the world. While these great projects 
received much of Mr. Washburn's thought 
while in the House, he was by no means un- 
mindful of the special needs of his district; his 
success in looking after its interests being 
amply testified to by the frequent renomina- 
tions which came to him. Among the most 
important items of his special work for Min- 
neapolis was the bill for a public building, 
which he successfully promoted early in the 
eighties. These material matters, important 
and engrossing as they were, did not interfere 
with Mr. Washburn's participation in all na- 
tional questions which came before Congress 
during his terms of office. He had always been 
a student of public affairs. Though a life-long 
and consistent Republican, he has a vein of 
independence in his make-up which has been 
perhaps developed through a settled habit of 
looking at things in their broader aspects 
rather than from the point of view of the poli- 
tician who sees only the immediate political 
effects. This habit of thought has brought 
him from time to time into apparent variance 
with his party; but it has usually been ac- 
knowledged, afterwards, thai he was right. 
Perhaps the best example of this political 






BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



141 



characteristic of Mr. Washburn was his oppo- 
sition to the so-called "force bill" while in the 
Senate. It will be remembered that the Lodge 
bill received the support of the Republican 
Senators — excepting about half a dozen "Sil- 
ver Republicans," who had formed a combina- 
tion with the Democrats — and that Mr. Wash- 
burn was the only Senator on that side of the 
house who opposed the measure. Believing 
that it was wrong in principle, and that it 
would not accomplish what it aimed to do, he 
voted against it — and received unstinted criti- 
cism from the party press for his independence 
of thought and action. The years which have 
passed since this episode have served to show 
that Mr. Washburn was right. There are prob- 
ably few men in the Republican party to-day 
who would favor such a measure as that pro- 
posed by Senator Lodge. Mr. Washburn does 
not pretend to flowery oratorical powers; he 
relies upon plain and earnest statements and 
sound logic and reasoning. And in presenting 
a question in this way he is very successful. 
And so, while not among the Congressmen 
whose voices are heard on every topic, he has 
been heard with the greatest respect when he 
has spoken on the floor of the House or Senate 
Chamber. During his Senatorial term he made 
two very elaborate speeches, which would 
have given him a very wide reputation had he 
never taken any other part in Congressional 
debates. One of these efforts was in support 
of the anti-option bill, the championship of 
which measure made Senator Washburn for a 
time the most conspicuous figure in the Senate. 
Believing profoundly in the principle that the 
buying and selling of that which did not exist 
was contrary to the laws of economics, and in 
practice injurious to business and morals, 
while it worked enormous detriment to the 
agricultural interests of the country, Mr. 
Washburn threw himself into the fight for 
the measure with a whole-souled energy which 
could have but one result. For four months the 
bill was the unfinished business in the Senate. 
It was a battle royal with enormous monied in- 
terests to contend with; but the victory was 
finally won. Senator Washburn's principal 
speech in support of this bill attracted wide 



attention in this country and abroad. The bill 
was throttled in the House and Mr. Washburn 
believes there has been a loss of hundreds of 
millions to the country, for which the leaders 
of the House, who prevented the votes, are 
responsible. By far the most elaborate and 
carefully prepared speech which Mr. Wash 
burn delivered while in the Senate was that 
upon the revenue bill of 1894, when he argued 
against the repeal of the reciprocity provisions 
secured by Mr. Blaine in 1890. This speech— 
on "reciprocity and new markets"— was one of 
the most comprehensive discussions of the 
reciprocity principle, the development of the 
commerce of the United States during its two 
years of trial, and the future possibilities of 
the system, which was ever made in Congress. 
While bringing statistics to show the trade 
relations with all American nations, Mr. Wash- 
burn gave special attention to Cuba, showing 
the wonderful increase in trade with that 
island under the reciprocal treaty with Spain. 
It was, of course, a foregone conclusion that 
the Democratic Congress would repeal the 
reciprocity agreements, but Mr. Washburn's 
speech revealed in all its baldness the certain 
result of such action— results which followed 
speedily and surely. Prolonged absence at 
times from his home city have not prevented 
Mr. Washburn and his family from filling a 
large place in the social life of Minneapolis. As 
soon as he had established himself in his new 
home Mr. Washburn returned to Maine, where, 
April 19, 1859, he was married to Miss Lizzie 
Muzzy, daughter of the Hon. Franklin Muzzy, a 
Bangor manufacturer and a man prominent in 
the political life of the State. A modest home 
was established in Minneapolis, and here their 
children, four sons and two daughters, passed 
their early childhood. Realizing that increas- 
ing fortune brought with it increased obliga- 
tion, Mr. Washburn some years ago purchased 
a beautiful tract of land and erected a mansion 
surrounded by most attractive grounds. This 
home, which was named "Fair Oaks," has be- 
come not only a center of social attraction, but 
an object of pride in a city where beauty of 
surroundings and the refinements of life are 
most highly appreciated. October 24, 1859, a 



142 



Ilinc.RAPHY <>F MINNESOTA. 



meeting was held in the village of Minneapolis 
for the purpose of organizing a Universalis! 
Church. On this occasion Mr. Washburn oc- 
cupied the chair, and his connection with the 
Church of the Redeemer dates from that meet- 
ing. It was at first a struggling society; it is 
now one of the leading churches of the denom- 
ination in the country. In its early vicissi- 
tudes and its later prosperity it has continu- 
ally had reason to remember Mr. Washburn's 
constant generosity, for in his church connec- 
tion, as in all other matters, he has been lib- 
eral in his contributions where there has been 
evidence of need and worthy object to be ac- 
complished. Of Mr. Washburn's religious be- 
liefs there could be no better testimony than 
this, from one in a position to know whereof he 
speaks : 

"Mr. Washburn is modest and sparing in his 
religious professions, but deep-rooted in his 
religious convictions. His father and mother 
were earnest Dniversalists, and he inherited 
their faith. To this he has been as loyal as to 
the other parental examples. His creed is 
pretty well summed up in the words. 'Father- 
hood of God and Brotherhood of Man." The 
broad spirit he shows elsewhere blossoms in 
his thoughts on spiritual matters. His daily 
prayer must be, in substance, that all men may 
one day be good, pure republicans of this world 
and saints in the next. Freedom for all and 
Heaven for all are his mottoes.'' 

The same excellent authority describes his 
friend in these words: 

"In personal appearance Mr. Washburn may 
be considered a very elegant gentleman. Neat 
and fashionable in his attire, symmetrical in 
form, inclining to slimness, erect, of more than 
medium height, clear-cut features, and bright, 
earnest eyes, graceful in movement, correct in 
speech, he impresses one even at first as a per 
son who has had always the best surroundings. 
He is dignified in manner, and is not indiffer- 
ent to style in whatever pertains to him. If on 
any occasion he shows abruptness of language 
and is slightly overbearing, difficult to be ap- 
proached, by strangers especially, it is owing 
generally and chiefly to the thorns of business 
he feels at the moment pricking him or to want 
of time to be himself. Hurry sometimes trips 
politeness." 



The latter part of this estimate seems at 
present inaccurate, however true it may have 
been when written — at a time when Mr. Wash 
Iniin was carrying vast loads of care both com 
mercial and political. It may be thai the prog- 
ress of years has softened a manner which still 
retains, however, all its characteristic dignity. 
Mr. Washburn has traveled much. It is almost 
a necessity to a man of his temperament to see 
what is going on in the world outside the lim- 
its of his home city or State. He has from time 
to time visited every part of the United States, 
.Mexico, Cuba and Canada. Six times he has 
visited Europe, on one of these pilgrimages ex- 
tending his journeyings to Egypt and the Nile, 
and on another seeing Norway and Sweden — 
the "Land of the Midnight Sun" — and Russia. 
Three years ago he spent six months in China, 
Japan and other oriental countries, and would 
have completed the "round the world" tour 
had it not been for the prevalence of the 
plague in India. In travel Mr. Washburn finds 
that continued education and those broadening 
influences which every intelligent man wel- 
comes throughout his life. lie has also found 
such rest from the cares of a life of much more 
than ordinary activity and responsibility that 
he is, at the age of sixty-eight, still in his 
prime, and bears himself with the air of a man 
much his junior. He is to-day, as he has al- 
ways been, a growing man. His interest in 
public affairs is unabated, and the attention 
which is paid to his views was very recently 
evidenced, when an interview, in which he de- 
nounced the trust evil, was quoted and com- 
mented upon from one end of the English 
speaking world to the other. 



GREENLEAF CLARK. 

Judge Greenleaf Clark was born in Plais- 
tow, Rockingham county. New Hampshire. 
August '2-'., 1 *:!.-. He is from Puritan stock, 
and is the son of Nathaniel it he seventh of 
that name in a direct line) and Betsy (P.rickett) 
Clark. The first Nathaniel was an Englishman 
by birth, who settled probably in Ipswich, Mas- 
sachusetts, some time during the first half of 








S*-1/LjZa^iJjL' <*lf- -'^fer^La^y^ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



143 



the Seventeenth Century, and was married on 
November 23, 1663, at Newbury, in the same 
Slate, where he then resided, to Elizabeth 
Somerby, granddaughter, on the mother's side, 
of Edmund Greenleaf, who was of Huguenot 
origin, and came to Newbury in 1635. The pa- 
ternal grandfather of Judge Clark enlisted, on 
March 14, 1781, at the age of sixteen, in the 
war of the Revolution. He was wounded dur- 
ing his service, which was continuous from the 
date of his enlistment to the end of the war. 
The subject of this sketch attended the public 
school of his native town, and was afterwards 
fitted for college at Atkinson Academy, in New 
Hampshire. He matriculated at Dartmouth 
College in 1851, and received the degree of A. 
B. from that institution in June, 1855. Imme- 
diately afterwards he began reading law in 
the office of Hatch & Webster, at Portsmouth. 
New Hampshire, and after a short period of 
study there, entered the Harvard Law School, 
from which he obtained the degree of LL. B. 
in 1857. During the same year he was admit 
ted at Boston to the Suffolk bar. In the fall 
of 1858 he came to St. Paul, Minnesota, where 
he has since resided, and engaged as a clerk 
in the law office of Michael E. Ames. After a 
brief term of service in that capacity he en- 
tered into partnership with Mr. Ames and 
ex-Judge Moses Sherburne, under the style of 
Ames, Sherburne & Clark. The firm was dis- 
solved in 1800, and Mr. Clark became associ- 
ated with Samuel R. Bond — now a lawyer of 
Washington, D. C. — forming the firm of Bond 
& Clark. This connection also was severed in 
1862, when Mr. Bond left the State. Mr. Clark 
then conducted an individual practice until 
1865, when he entered a new partnership, this 
time with the eminent Horace R. Bigelow. The 
business of the firm of Bigelow & Clark de- 
veloped to a great magnitude, and in the year 
1870 Charles E. Flandrau, then an ex-Judge of 
the Supreme Court, became a member of it. the 
firm being Bigelow, Flandrau & Clark. This 
firm continued in business until the year 1881, 
when it was dissolved upon the appointment 
of Mr. Clark as an Associate Justice of the Su- 
preme Court of Minnesota. He served about a 
year in that capacity, during which time there 



was argued at great length, and decided, the 
important case involving the constitutionality 
of the legislative enactments for the adjust 
meat of the Minnesota Slate Railroad bonds. 
Upon leaving the bench, Judge Clark resumed 
the practice of the law, and in 1885 became as 
sociated in business with the late Homer C. El 
ler and dared How (now of How & Taylor), un- 
der the firm name of Clark, Eller & I lew. which 
firm was dissolved January 1. lsss, by the per- 
manent retirement of Judge Clark from the 
practice of his profession. The firms of Bige- 
low & Clark, and Bigelow, Flandrau & Clark. 
although engaged in general practice, were 
largely concerned in corporation business. 
They acted as the general counsel for the St. 
Paul and Pacific, and the First division of the 
St. Paul and Pacific Railroad companies (one 
of the land grant systems of the State), up to 
the time of their re-organization — consequent 
upon the foreclosure of the mortgages thereon 
— into the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Mani- 
toba Railway Company (now the Great North- 
ern i, in 1880. They also acted as the attorneys 
of the Minnesota Central Railway Company, 
extending from St. Paul and Minneapolis 
through Minnesota and Iowa to Prairie du 
< 'hien, Wisconsin, which had a land grant from 
Congress, and of the St. Paul and Chicago 
Railway Company, extending from St. Paul to 
I.a Crosse, Wisconsin, which had a swamp land 
grant from the State, and for the Southern 
Minnesota Railroad Company, extending from 
La Crescent to the western boundary of the 
State, also a Congressional land grant com- 
pany; all three of which afterwards became 
parts of the Milwaukee and St. Paul railway 
system, of which organization, afterwards the 
Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway 
Company, they were also attorneys. These 
services embraced the periods of the construe 
lion of these lines in Minnesota, the acquisition 
of their right of way and terminal grounds and 
facilities by condemnation and otherwise, as 
well as the foreclosure of the St. Paul and Pa- 
cific Railroad Companies, and the Southern 
Minnesota Railway Company, and their 
subsequent reorganization. They involved the 
conduct and defence of a large number of law- 



1 44 



I'.IOUKAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



suits, both in the State and Federal Courts, in- 
volving, among other questions, the chartered 
rights, powers, immunities and duties of these 
companies, and in the case of the first division 
of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company, 
its legal corporate existence, as well as their 
rights to lands under these land grants, and 
the adjustment of conflicting grants with other 
companies. After Judge Clark's retirement 
from the bench he returned to general practice, 
and became at once engaged in the service of 
railroad corporations, though not the general 
counsel of any of them. He, and the firm of 
which he was the head, served, in special suits 
and other matters, the St. Paul and Sioux City 
Railroad Company, the St. Paul and Duluth 
Railroad Company, the St. Paul, Minneapolis 
and Manitoba Railway Company, and the 
Great Northern Railway Company. His ser- 
vices were largely engaged in matters con- 
nected with the organization and construction 
of extensions and proprietary lines and prop- 
erties, the preparation of trust deeds and 
securities connected with the financing of the 
various companies, the preparation of leases 
and trackage, traffic and other contracts con- 
nected with their operation and their relation 
to other companies, and to the purchase and 
consolidation of other properties. In 1870 
Judge Clark was appointed a regent of the 
University of Minnesota, which office he has 
continued to hold by repeated appointments, 
from that date to the present time. While 
Judge Clark's period of service on the bench 
was very brief, a number of his opinions deliv- 
ered during that time have become leading 
eases and landmarks in the law. It was a 
source of profound regret to all his friends, as 
well as a great loss to the State that he felt 
compelled, by reason of the impairment of his 
health by his long and arduous labors in his 
profession, to retire from the active practice 
of the law when he was still in the prime of 
life and capable of doing his very best work. 

A leading member of the Minnesota Bar 
says: 

"Judge Clark was one of the leaders of the 
bar; no man at the bar of the Northwest ex- 
celled him in soundness of judgment, in power 



of analysis, in grasp of mind or clearness of 
statement. His forte was not erudition or 
technical learning; he was not what is known 
as a case lawyer. He had that rare legal in- 
stinct, or perception, which detects the turn 
ing point or pivotal question, discarding imma- 
terial and collateral inquiries. This is a mark 
of the highest order of legal intellect, and 
only tlie experienced lawyer or judge knows 
how rare it is. His grasp and power of mind 
and patient industry brought him almost-with- 
out exception to correct conclusions. 

Few lawyers ever felt the responsibility of 
their client's troubles more seriously than 
Judge Clark. This forced him to undergo an 
amount of labor which was unusual. He was 
incapable of disposing of questions lightly or 
easily. It was an essential part of his habit 
of mind to treat everything seriously and thor- 
oughly. He was incapable of quitting a sub- 
ject without digging to the bottom of it. His 
important railway contracts and mortgages 
were models, and owe their value to his having 
scanned and weighed their every word, as 
well as to his having understood thoroughly 
every subject with which his contract dealt. 
The writer of this can testify from personal 
knowledge that while he may have known 
lawyers who knew more cases or who had 
more showy accomplishments, he never knew 
one whose judgment was sounder or who was 
more apt to be right on a legal question, par- 
ticularly on a fundamental or great question. 

But without detracting from his other emi- 
nent talents, his highest qualification to be 
called a great lawyer was probably his perfect 
honesty and love of justice. He was both in- 
tellectually and morally honest, which at once 
enabled him to discern what was just, and led 
him to do it. As law is founded on moral jus 
tice, no man can be a great lawyer without 
these qualities. Judge Clark possesses them 
to the highest degree." 



HENRY T. WELLES. 



Among those who were the real founders of 
the city of Minneapolis, and who helped to lay 
the foundations of the present greatness of the 
Commonwealth of Minnesota, a well-known 
pioneer, business man and philanthropist of 
the city and State, was Henry Titus Welles. 
This distinguished citizen came to Minnesota 
in 1853, and after a career of usefulness and 
prominence extending over a period of forty- 





^^w 



BIOGL'Al'IIY OF MINNESOTA.. 



M5 



five years, died in the city which he had done 
so much to create, March 4, 1898. Henry T. 
Welles was born at Glastonbury, Connecticut, 
April 3, 1821. His father was Jonathan Welles 
and the maiden name of his mother was Jeru- 
sha Welles, his parents being cousins in the 
second degree. He came of a very old New 
England family. He was a direct descendant 
of Thomas Welles, the founder of the family in 
America, who came from England in 1G3G, and 
was subsequently Governor of the Colony of 
Connecticut. Gideon Welles, President Lin- 
coln's Secretary of the Navy, was also a de- 
scendant of Thomas Welles. The English 
branch of the family was established when 
some of its members came in from Prance with 
William the Conqueror, the name at first being 
written De Welles. The paternal grandfather 
of Henry T.Welles married Catherine, a grand- 
daughter of Gurdon Saltonsta.ll, who was Gov- 
ernor of Connecticut from 1707 to 1724, dying 
in office. Jonathan Welles was an industrious 
and thrifty Connecticut farmer, and his son 
Henry T. was reared to young manhood on his 
father's farm, which had been in the posses 
sion of the family for four generations. He 
was brought up to hard work, economy, and to 
deal uprightly and honorably with all men. 
As a boy he was unusually bright and apt, 
fond of study and reading, and quick to learn. 
He soon passed the course of the common 
country school, and when but twelve years old 
entered an academy, and began preparatory 
studies in algebra, natural philosophy and 
Latin. One of his preceptors was Elihu Bur- 
ritt, the celebrated astronomer and linguist, 
known to fame as "the learned blacksmith." 
His education was completed at Trinity Col- 
lege, Hartford, Connecticut, from which insti- 
tution — then called Washington College — he 
was graduated in 1843. Among his classmates 
were Thomas S. Preston, subsequently Vicar- 
General of the Catholic Arch-Diocese of New 
York; William B. Curtis, who became Chief 
Justice of the New York Superior Court, and 
Henry A. Sanford, at one time United States 
Minister to Belgium. His scholastic attain 
ments were very superior. He was especially 
proficient in the classics, and read Latin and 



Greek almost as fluently as his mother lan- 
guage, and he had a profound knowledge of 
mathematics and the other sciences. For a 
time after his graduation he taught the higher 
branches of learning in a select school, lb 
read law and was enrolled among the attor- 
neys of Hartford county. In 1850 he was 
elected to the Legislature. Soon after his Leg- 
islative experience his health became impaired 
and he was advised to seek a change of climate. 
He decided on a trip to the Northwest, and 
after a long journey, arrived at St. Paul, June 
12, 1853. The next day he went up to St. 
Anthony Falls. He at once decided upon a 
permanent location at "the Falls'' in the then 
young Territory, with its clear skies, beautiful 
scenes and magnificent possibilities. In his 
reminiscences of the incident, he subsequently 
wrote : 

"I had reached my destination. I was more 
than satisfied. When I looked down from 
.Meeker Hill on the various landscape of river, 
cataract, prairie and grove, and the mills, 
stores, and dwellings now embraced in the 
city of Minneapolis, I felt a homelike pleasure 
that has continued unabated to this day. The 
loss of my native home was compensated. I 
became a fixture in another. It was the fittest 
place in all the earth for me — as if I had been 
miraculously taken up into the clouds and 
borne westward, and by the guiding hand of 
Providence dropped down upon it." 
1 

It is rare that a man of scholastic tastes and 
accomplishments decides upon an active busi- 
ness career, involving hard and persistent 
labor and endeavor, and the many exactions 
incident to such a life. Most men of the kind 
choose a career of more refinement, and enter 
one of the so-called professions, becoming col- 
lege professors, lawyers, doctors or the like. 
But Henry T. Welles was active and enter- 
prising by nature, and inured to practical work 
from boyhood. He was a man of versatile 
abilities, could adapt himself to surroundings, 
and could do almost anything. Within a few- 
days after his arrival at St. Anthony he had 
formed a partnership with Franklin Steele, 
who then lived at Fort Snelling, in the conduct 
of his saw-mills at the Falls and in the lumber 



r 4 6 



Blor.KABIlY OF MINNESOTA. 



business generally, and was hard at work. 
Franklin Steele and Henry T. Welles were 
both good judges of men. They "took to" each 
other on sight. Their estimates were correct, 
and their partnership was profitable and suc- 
cessful from the start. Within the present 
limits the career of Henry T. Welles in 
Minnesota can only be imperfectly sketched. 
At once upon his arrival here, he became 
a leader among his fellow citizens. In 
1855 he was elected mayor of St. Anthony. 
In 1856 he crossed the river and located 
in what was then called Minneapolis, and 
in 1858, .as president of the town council, 
was the first head of the municipal govern- 
ment. The same year he was president of the 
school board. He and Mr. Steele, as proprie- 
tors of the Minneapolis Bridge Company, in 
1855, built the first bridge that spanned the 
Mississippi river. The bridges lower down the 
river, between Iowa and Illinois, were built 
afterwards. He was naturally an engineer, 
and superintended in fact nearly all of the 
many works of construction in which he was 
interested. Soon after he entered into part- 
nership with Mr. Steele in the saw-milling 
business, the water in the channel of the river 
became so low that the mill-power wheels 
would not turn. Everybody was in despair, 
for the prosperity of the place depended 
upon the continuous operation of the 
saw-mills. Mr. Welles, with his Yankee 
tact, readily conceived a remedy for the 
bad state of things. Constructing some 
frames called "horses," he set them in 
the channel, floated and fastened slabs against 
them, and thus made a "horse and slab"' dam, 
which narrowed the channel, increased the 
volume of water, and the wheels went merrily 
around. He always had an expedient for 
every emergency. His investments in Minne- 
apolis lots and blocks, and other real estate 
in Minneapolis, were always judiciously made 
and proved highly profitable. He early be- 
came interested in railroad building in Minne- 
sota, and he was present at the session of Con- 
gress in 185G-7 for some weeks, earnestly 
urging governmenl aid for projected roads in 
the Territory. At one time he owned a great 



part of the town of Breckenridge, but he gave 
nearly all of his interests away — one hundred 
acres to the town for a park and fair grounds, 
one hundred and sixty acres to the Episcopal 
Diocese of Minnesota, lots to the Catholic and 
Protestant churches, a block for the court 
house, etc. In 1855 he became one of the pro- 
prietors of St. ('loud, and did his share in 
founding that city. His acquirements of 
material interests were large, but his ben- 
efactions in aid of churches, schools, mu- 
nicipalities and his fellow men generally, 
amounted to a large fortune. His gifts 
to the Faribault institutions alone amounted 
to $70,000. In Minneapolis he and Mr. Steele 
gave to St. Mark's church the site of the pres- 
ent Kasota building; to the First Baptist 
church, virtually the site of the Lumber Ex- 
change; to the Second Baptist a large lot on 
Hennepin avenue, etc. To the Episcopal and 
Catholic churches Mr. Welles alone gave $20,- 
000 in cash, besides making liberal donations 
at different times to other churches, hospitals, 
educational institutions and worthy charities. 
If he received fully, he gave freely. He never 
neglected his full duty as a citizen and a man. 
In all public enterprises for the good of his 
city, his county and his State, he was among 
the foremost. It was his efforts which induced 
the people of Minneapolis to vote aid to pre- 
vent the falls from falling to ruin, and mainly 
through his individual efforts the large 
"apron," which protects them, was construct- 
ed. It is said that he always voted at elections 
— and voted as lie pleased. He was not a poli- 
tician as the term is commonly construed, 
but he always had his opinions on matters of 
public policy, and did not hesitate to express 
them. In 1S63 he was the Democratic candi- 
date for Governor of Minnesota, but was de- 
feated by Cen. Stephen Miller. This was during 
the War of the Rebellion, when — whether just- 
ly so or not — the Democratic party was in 
public disfavor, and he knew there was no 
possible chance of his election when he accept- 
ed the nomination. He was, however, a War 
Democrat, earnestly in favor of subduing the 
Rebellion at all hazards, and no impeachment 
was ever made of his loyalty and patriotism. 



BIOGRArnY OF MINNESOTA 



147 



He only doubted, at the time, the wisdom of 
certain policies of the Republican party. Ee 
was a friend — but not a foolish friend — of the 
colored people, and in Connecticut he had 
taughf a school where negro children were ad- 
mitted to full privileges with the whites. He 
was wholly unbiased and unprejudiced in all 
his views, so that in politics he was practically 
independent; in religion tolerant and liberal; 
in all tilings charitable. Until the very 
last months of his life he was a very busy 
man. He assisted in organizing the North- 
western National Bank and was for many 
years its president. He was one of the 
organizers of the Farmers & Mechanics 
Savings Bank, and was for a long time promi- 
nent in its affairs. His other interests were 
large and important, and while he gave them 
his individual attention and managed them 
well, he became, in the public estimation, most 
prominently identified with the financial inter- 
ests of the Northwest, and more widely known 
as a financier. This ripe scholar, this public 
citizen, this man of affairs, was a sincere and 
humble Christian and a devout religionist, be- 
lieving and trusting in Almighty Cod and serv- 
ing Him. He had given the subject of religion 
much study and thought from early life, and 
his convictions were as deep as his investiga- 
tions had been thorough. He was a communi- 
cant of the Episcopal Church, but tolerant ami 
well disposed towards all other Christian de- 
nominations. A few days before he left Con 
necticut for the Northwest, on May 3rd, 1853, 
Mi'. Welles married Jerusha Lord, a daughter 
of Joseph Lord, of Glastonbury. To their 
union were born six children. Mr. Welles 
died at Minneapolis, March 4, 1898, at the 
ripe age of nearly seventy seven years. It 
was alnnist in the nature of a divine dis- 
pensation that he was permitted to die in 
the splendid city, where lie had been so long 
and so actively employed, which he had done 
so much to create and build up, so that the city 
itself is practically his besi monument, and 
where there were so many of his fellow men 
who knew him best and loved him most. And 
though he had more than reached the allotted 
span of life to the good man, it was felt that 



his death was untimely and amounted to a 
public misfortune. "So should a man end his 

days." 

■ 

WILLIAM MITCHELL. 

Hon. William Mitchell, the distinguished 
jurist who has for many years been one of the 
judges of the Supreme Court of Minnesota, was 
born in the town of Stamford, County of Wel- 
land, Providence of Ontario, Canada, Novem- 
ber 1.9, 1832. His parents, John Mitchell ami 
Mary Henderson, were natives of Scotland. His 
early education was received in private schools. 
and he was prepared for college at a private 
academy in his native county. In 1848 he came 
to the United States, and the same year, at the 
age of sixteen, he entered Jefferson College, 
Canonsberg, Pennsylvania, and graduated 
from that institution in the class of 1853. Af- 
ter his graduation he was for two years a 
teacher in an academy at Morgantown, Vir- 
ginia (now West Virginia). He then engaged 
in the study of law in the office of Hon. Edgar 
M. Wilson of Morgantown, and was admitted 
to the bar in that place in March, 1807. 
In April, 1867, a month after his admission, 
he came to Minnesota and located at Winona. 
in the practice of his chosen profession. He 
was in constant and prominent practice until 
ls74. In the meantime he served in the second 
State Legislature, in the session of 1859-60, and 
was subsequently, for one term, county attor- 
ney of Winona county. In the fall of 187-"> 
he was elected -fudge of the District Court 
of the Third Judicial District for a term 
of seven years, and went on the bench 
in January, 1874. He was reelected in 
the fall of 1880, and was in service until 
March, 1881, when he was appointed by Gov- 
ernor Pillsbliry one of the judges of the State 
Supreme Court. He was regularly elected 1o 
that position in the fall of 1881, and by sue 
cessive re-elections he has served continuously 
up to the present time. His term will expire in 
January, 1900, when he will leave the position 
which he has so long and so eminently rilled. 
Upon the eve of his retirement it is but justice 
and truth to say that Judge Mitchell has 






1 4§ 



I'.IOGKAI'IIY OF MINNESOTA. 



served in his high judicial position with the 
greatest acceptability. His profound and ex- 
haustive knowledge of the law, his clour intel- 
ligence, and his broad spirit of fairness have 
combined to give him a most exalted reputa- 
tion. His opinions have come to be regarded 
as weighty and standard authorities, and they 
have a wide range over the entire field of juris 
prudence. Some of his decisions have been 
against the interests of the political party with 
which he is connected, but in such instances 
were as promptly and fully rendered as if they 
related lo matters of an altogether different 
character. He has attained to such distinction 
among the lawyers and courts of the North- 
west, that there lias long been a desire for his 
advancement and further preferment. He lias 
done a great deal of hard and exacting work, 
but is splendidly preserved, mentally and phys- 
ically, and is capable of many more years of 
active and valuable service in his profession. 
Originally a Republican, Judge Mitchell has 
been an Independent Democrat since 1807, but 
lias always been elected to office by a non-par- 
tisan vote, and sometimes by a universal suf- 
frage. A distinguished lawyer of St. Paul, who 
was for many years on the Supreme Bench of 
the Slate says: 

"I may here state that Judge Mitchell 
never made any effort in his own behalf 
when he was a candidate for judge, hold- 
ing that it was unbecoming in a judge to do 
so, and (he nominations and elections, there- 
lore, came to him because of the estimation in 
which the people held him as a man and as a 
jurist. As a man, I do not exaggerate when I 
say that no one in our State has been held in 
greater esteem as a man of purity and high 
character. In point of ability, I think then' 
has never been on the bench of our State his 
superior as a judge." 

From an editorial in the "Pioneer Press" 
(Republican), November 2, L89S, we quote the 
following: 

"Judge Mitchell was the one man on the Su- 
preme Bench that could least be spared. He 
was put there originally by appointment of 
Governor Pillsbury seventeen years ago, both 
because of the high reputation he had gained 



as a District Judge, and also because lie was a 
Democrat, it being the strong desire of Gover- 
nor Pillsbury to satisfy the prevailing public 
sentiment in favor of a non-partisan judiciary. 
Appointed originally by a 
Republican Governor, lie has been three limes 
nominated by the concurrent action of the state 
conventions of both parties and elected by the 
unanimous vote of the electors of all parties. 
And this not only because he has represented 
the principle of non-partisanship in the judi- 
ciary, but because of his exceptionally high 
standing and reputation as a judge; because 
he united the intellectual and moral qualities 
— the ability, learning and acuteness of a great 
jurist with I he purity and unbending integrity 
of an honest man — which constitute the ideal 
judge. 'Without disparagement to oilier 
judges on the bench, it is safe to say thai, in 
the general opinion of the bar. there is none 
of .lodge Mitchell's associates on the bench, 
and none who have been nominated on either 
ticket, who could not be far better spared than 
he. * * * » And Judge Mitchell's repu- 
tation as a judge extends far beyond the boun- 
daries of his own State. No better proof could 
be afforded of the high estimation in which 
he is held as a jurist by lawyers throughout 
the country, or of the great respect entertained 
for his judicial opinions, than is afforded by 
the following letter received by a leading law- 
yer of Minneapolis soon after the failure of the 
Republican State convention to nominate him, 
from Professor Thayer, of the Harvard Law 
School: 

'Cambridge, Mass.. Sept. 2, 1898.— My Dear 
Sir: I am astonished to hear that there is 
doubt of the re-election of Judge Mitchell to 
your Supreme Court. I wish the people of 
Minnesota knew the estimate that is put upon 
him in other parts of the country, and there 
could be no doubt about it then. 

I never saw him and have no personal ac- 
quaintance with him. I know him only as a 
judge whose opinions, like those of all the 
judges in the country, reach me through the 
excellent law reports published in your State. 
In the course of my work at the Harvard Law 
School I have long had to search carefully 
through these reports for cases relating to my 
special subjects. In that way I have long rec- 
ognized .lodge Mitchell as one of the best 
judges in this country, and have come to know 
also the opinion held of him by lawyers com- 
petent to pass an opinion on such a question. 

There is no occasion for making an exception 
of the Supreme Court of the United Stales. 
On no court in I he country to-day is there a 
judge who would not find his peer in Judge 





A, M*£v^$ic 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



1 40 



Mitchell. * * * * Pray do not allow your State 
to lose the services of such a man. To keep 
him on the bench is a service not merely to 
Minnesota, but to the whole country and to the 
law. Your State it is that is on trial now before 
the country. The question is: Can Minnesota 
appreciate such a man? Is it worthy to have 
him? I am not going to believe that a State 
which can command the services of one of the 
few judges in the country that stand out 
among their fellows as pre-eminent, that give- 
it distinction, will refuse to accept those serv- 
ices. You lawyers of Minnesota must not let 
party politics work any such result. Surely 
the bar can prevent it if they will. 
Always truly yours 

J. B. Thayer.'" 

Judge Mitchell has been twice married. His 
first marriage was to Mrs. E. Jane Smith, of 
Morgantown, Virginia, in September, 1857. She 
died in September, 1867, leaving three daugh- 
ters, who subsequently became Mrs. J. K. Ew- 
ing, Mrs. Henry L. Staples, and Mrs. Frank A. 
Hancock. His second marriage was in July, 
1*72. to Mrs. Francis M. Smith, of Chicago. 
She died in March, 1801, leaving a son, Mr. 
William De Witt Mitchell, who graduated 
from the Law School of the Minnesota State 
University in the class of 1896, and is now en- 
gaged in the practice of his profession in St. 
Paul. 



JOHN M. SHAW 



The harmonious life of the late Judge 
John Melville Shaw, of Minneapolis, here 
sketched in outline, long identified with 
tlie progressive development of Minnesota, and 
deeply lamented when cut off, was nurtured in 
a rural nest hidden away among the hills of 
Maine. Though born and reared in a retired 
nook, this son of the Pine-Tree Stale possessed 
by birthright all those sturdy and true forces 
tit character which qualify a man to grasp and 
grapple with the complex problems of metro- 
politan life. His remote ancestry was Scotch 
English on the father's side. English on the 
mother's; while nearer, we find the energies 
representative of both sides twining- in numer- 
ous strands among the virile liber of which 



New England was built up. From the paternal 
slock, early colonists to America added their 
quota to the vitality of Massachusetts Bay; 
the grandfather of Judge Shaw was an ardent 
patriot of the Revolution, who, as a boy ser- 
geant, fought at Bunker Hill. Disabled for 
hind service by a wound in the foot, he became 
a privateer, continuing as such until independ- 
ence was declared. Judge Shaw's mother was 
the daughter of Benjamin French, a distin- 
guished physician of Maine, and counted 
among her earlier ancestors a Pilgrim Father. 
Thomas French, and an English rector, Rev. 
Joseph Hull, a graduate of Oxford, who, in 
1621, relinquished his parish in Devon to join 
the young settlement in Massachusetts. From 
each of these settlers sprang families of re- 
pute, in the annals of which we find record of 
successful jurists, including Hon. Daniel 
French of New Hampshire and Hon. Henry 
French of Boston, grandfather and father, re- 
spectively, of the noted sculptor, Daniel Ches- 
ter French. George Shaw, the youthful patriot 
above mentioned, located in the town of Ex- 
eter, Maine, near which his numerous sons and 
daughters also settled, most of them upon 
farms. One of the sons, however, the name- 
sake of his father, eschewing the agricultural 
life, found commercial prosperity in the city 
of Mexico, while John, the eighth child, be- 
came the leading merchant of his little home 
village, which honored him by adopting the 
name of "Shaw's Corner.'' This merchant 
came in time to be the father of a goodly fam- 
ily. Of the three sons, the eldest died in child 
hood. The youngest is Maj. George K. Shaw. 
who has won distinction in the Northwest as 
a journalist. He is a veteran of the Civil War 
and father of Captain Melville J. Shaw of the 
T. S. Marine Corps, who was brevetted in rec- 
ognition of his courageous service at Guanta 
namo. It is with the second of these sons. 
John Melville Shaw, that we are now chieflj 
concerned. He was horn December IS, 18:',:!, 
and passed childhood and early youth in his 
rural home. He attended both the public 
school and the private high school of the vil- 
lage, and was for a few terms a student at 
East Corinth Academy. He was now prepared 



[So 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



for college, but his ambitions in this direction 
were not to In- realized. Financial reverses 
had conic, and the family decided to seek bet- 
ter fortune in the West. They set out on their 
journey, intending to proceed directly to St. 
Anthony's Falls; but the lateness of the season 
and consequent close of navigation checked 
their progress at Galena, Illinois, where they 
were obliged to spend the winter. Both John 
Melville and his father found opportunities to 
teach during the cold weather, and in April 
the father pushed on up the river. He took 
up lands in the vicinity of St. Paul and Wi- 
nona, sending his sons to hold the former 
claim, while himself retaining the latter. But 
his sudden death a few months later resulted 
in the abandoning of the lands and loss of the 
money invested in them, with the exception 
of a farming tract at Cottage Grove. John 
Melville, though bul nineteen years of age. 
now found himself the head of the family, 
with little capital save his personal abilities. 
His cherished hope for a liberal education 
must be finally renounced, but despair could 
find no vulnerable point in his armor of youth 
ful courage. Continuing to live at Galena, 
in the household for which he fell responsible, 
he toiled for five years as bookkeeper and 
shipping clerk for a wholesale grocery concern, 
in reality working as two men. for the salary 
of one. And there was still a third man in 
him— intellectual, eager, aspiring, who often 
in the watches of the night might have been 
found poring over classics, both literary and 
legal. Though denied the fulfillment of his 
collegiate dream, he determined to master the 
legal profession, and so thorough was his soli- 
tary work to this end that it took bul one year 
of study in a law office to enable him to pass 
I he examination of the Supreme Court of Illi- 
nois and gain admittance to the bar. For two 
years he practiced at Galena; he then went 
to l'lalleville, Wisconsin, and entered into a 
partnership with John G. Scott. The business 
outlook in l'latteville seemed promising, but 
the Civil War was on, and both partners felt 
the call of their country. Together they raised 
Company F, of the Twenty tilth Wisconsin 
Volunteer Infantry, and on September 1, 1862, 



with -Mr. Scott as captain and Mr. Shaw as 
second lieutenant, Company F, with the rest 
of the regiment, marched for the front. First 
serving in the Minnesota Indian campaign, the 
regiment was then sent to Vicksburg to rein- 
force General Grant. Subsequently it was 
changed to the trans -Mississippi department 
and to that of the Tennessee. For upwards of 
a year Lieutenant Shaw served as judge-advo- 
cate of the general court-martial at Columbus, 
Kentucky, having also officiated as first assist 
ant quartermaster. Afterwards, upon the 
death of Captain Scott, he succeeded to the 
vacant post, and with his company partici- 
pated in the Atlanta campaign, and the im- 
mortal march through Georgia. Being again. 
in the spring of 1865, detailed as judgeadvo 
cate, and acting provost marshal of the First 
Division, he served in both capacities until the 
end of the war. As an officer Captain Shaw 
won the respect alike of those he led in battle 
and his superiors in rank; as a soldier-corn 
rade he endeared himself to all. His military 
experiences having undermined his health. 
upon return from the war, he sought its 
restoration in the invigorating atmosphere of 
Minnesota, and in February. 1866, located as 
an attorney at Minneapolis. His practice came 
slowly but surely, drawn by the unfailing mag- 
netism of superior ability and faithful applica- 
tion to duty, and in 1868 he entered into a 
partnership with Hon. Franklin Beebe. In 
1S7."> Judge Beebe withdrew from the firm, and 
Albert Levi and Willard R. Cray entered it. 
Judge Best subsequently becoming a member. 
Other changes occurred later on, and at the 
time of the senior partner's death the firm was 
operating as Shaw. Cray, Lancaster & Parker. 
In July. 1881, Mr. Shaw was ottered a position 
on the Supreme Bench, he having been for sev- 
eral years recognized as the head of the Hen- 
nepin county bar; but for various impersonal 
reasons he decided to decline this honor SO 
fondly cherished in the profession. In the fol- 
lowing year, however, his health showing signs 
of giving wax under the stress of work, he was 
persuaded by his friends to till a position va- 
cated al that tii n the District Bench of 

the county; and at the following general elec- 



IMOCRAI'IIY OF MINNESOTA. 



151 



tioii he was unanimously chosen for the full 
six-years' term. But ho found this office less 
to his taste than independent practice, and in 
1883, his health having' become much im- 
proved, he resumed and pursued during his 
remaining years his favorite line of work. 
Apart from his judgeship, the only public office 
he ever held was that of city attorney for a 
single term during (he early days in Minne- 
apolis, lie was eminently qualified to compete 
for laurels in public life with I he brightest and 
the best; but although brave, self-respecting 
and aggressive for the right, he was still a 
modest and retiring man. He was a staunch 
Republican, and felt a lively interest in all 
that a Heeled the public weal, but never posed 
as a politician or sought public preferment. 
His life interest was centered in his work, 
which he loved for its own sake — for the sake 
of justice. He was essentially and scrupu- 
lously just. The humblest of his petitioners 
was as secure of an equitable adjustment of 
his cause as was his most influential client ; 
and the same conscientious thoroughness and 
accuracy characterized his preparation for 
minor cases as for the many weighty ones 
through which he became renowned. Justice 
he would have done, even though it entailed 
his own pecuniary detriment. Yet he pros- 
pered. Clients Hocked to him, confided in him, 
accepted his advice as gospel. During the last 
twenty years of his life there were few civil 
causes of prime importance tried in the State 
in which he did not figure prominently. Nor 
was his practice confined to his own State. 
He was frequently associated with distin- 
guished lawyers in New York and other dis- 
tant cities in litigations of magnitude. So 
logical, terse and exact was his written work 
that portions of it have been incorporated into 
•court decisions; and the value of his services 
in the profession is attested in no less than 
fifty volumes of Minnesota State Reports, as 
also in various other legal publications. A.S 
he was a lover of justice, so he was a hater 
of all devices to defeat the ends of justice, 
and, before the bar, his tongue could lie most 
scathing in their denunciation. His was an 
orator's tongue, but in the social circle its 



trenchant edge was softened to a tone of genial 
humor which made him the most entertaining 
and companionable of men. From his pen, 
likewise fluent and forceful, the press gleaned 
many a valuable article on current topics. In 
the meetings of the G. A. R. and Loyal Legion, 
of which Judge Shaw was a member, he was 
always a conspicuous personality, the most 
faithful affection existing between him and his 
old army comrades. Side by side with this 
loyalty in his breast was the more remote loy- 
alty and patriotism handed down by his Revo- 
lutionary grandsire. and a keen interest in 
reformatory movements inherited from his 
father, a man always abreast of the times. In 
September, 1864, during a furlough from mili- 
tary service. Mr. Shaw was united in marriage 
to Miss Ellen A. Eliot, a schoolmate of his boy- 
hood, and a distant relative on the French 
side. Mrs. Shaw and the three children of the 
marriage are living. The two daughters are 
Mrs. Cavour S. Langdon and Miss Rertha 
Shaw; the son, John Eliot Shaw, has grad- 
uated at Yale, and is now a law student in his 
father's former office and at the State Univer- 
sity. Judge Shaw was a loyal son and brother, 
a most devoted husband and father. His home 
was one in which reigned harmony and happi- 
ness. The same noble unselfishness which 
kept his purse open to public charity extended 
to the domestic and social circles. With all 
his simple virtues he had an aesthetic side. He 
reveled in the refined luxuries of culture, mu- 
sic, art, poetry. He possessed a choice library, 
literary as well as legal, and spent many bliss- 
ful hours of retirement among his books. He 
was one of those rare characters "whose hearts 
have a look southwards, and are open fo the 
whole noon of nature; whose weaknesses are 
lovely as (heir strengths, like the white, nebu- 
lous matter between stars, which, if not light, 
at least is likes! light ; men whom we build our 
love round like an arch of triumph, as they 
pass us on their way to glory and to immor- 
tality." Judge Shaw was stricken with heart 
failure and died December 6, 1S!>7, with his 
mind still full of hopeful plans for future ac- 
tivity. Removed from the midst of bereaved 
friends, yet not lost to the world ; for the influ- 



152 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



ence of so gracious a life, exerted for three- 
score years, must continue, potentially, deep- 
ening and widening ad infinitum. 



GEORGE A. PILLSBURY. 

The name of Pillsbury has become so promi- 
nent and so honored throughout this country 
and is so well known abroad that a brief men- 
tion of the ancestry of the Pillsbury family 
may be interesting. The family history 
has been traced back to William Pills- 
bury (sometimes spelled Pillsberry and some- 
times Pillsborough), who was born in the 
county of Essex, in England, in 1615. 
William Pillsbury came to Dorchester, in 
the colony of Massachusetts bay, in 16-40, 
where he married Dorothy Crosby. In 1651 
he settled on a farm in Newbury, Massachu- 
setts, now a part of Newburyport, and this 
farm property lias remained in the possession 
of the Pillsbury family from L651 to the pres- 
ent time. The eoat of arms of the Pillsbury 
family in England, whence came the family, 
bore the inscription, "Labor Omnia Yincit," a 
motto which is suggestive of the industry and 
diligence which has always characterized all 
the branches of the Pillsbury family in this 
country. William Pillsbury died at Newbury 
June 10, 1686, leaving ten children, seven sons 
and three daughters. Moses Pillsbury, second 
son of William and Dorothy Crosby Pillsbury, 
was bom in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and 
in 1668 married Mrs. Susanna Whipple of New 
bury. To them were born six children. Caleb, 
second son of .Moses and Susanna, was born in 
Newbury in L681, and married Sarah Morss in 
1703. Caleb, son of Caleb and Sarah Morss 
Pillsbury. was born in Newbury January 26, 
1717: he married Sarah Kimball of Amesbury, 
Massachusetts, July, 1742, and to them were 
born seven children. Caleb Pillsbury. Jr.. was 
for several years, and at the time of his death, 
a member of the .Massachusetts General Court. 
Micajah, fourth son of Caleb, Jr., and Sarah 
Kimball, was born in Amesbury, Massachu 
setts. May 22, L761, and in 17S1 married Sarah 
Sargent, of Amesbury, and to them were born 



eight children, four sons and four daughters. 
Micajah Pillsbury and family moved from 
Amesbury. Massachusetts, to Sutton, New 
Hampshire, in February, 1705, where he re- 
mained until his death in 1802, occupying 
various offices of town trust. His wife survived 
him several years. Stephen, the oldest son, 
was a Baptist clergyman; the other brothers. 
including John, the father of George Alfred 
Pillsbury, were all magistrates of the town 
of Sutton, New Hampshire. John Pills- 
bury, the father of George A., was born 
in 1789. He was prominent in the town 
affairs of Sutton, being a selectman for several 
years, and representing the town in the State 
Legislature. He was also a captain in the 
State militia, in those days when a military 
commission had a significance. On the 2d of 
April, 1811, he married Susan Wadleigh, a 
daughter of Benjamin Wadleigh, a settler in 
Sutton in 1771. Benjamin Wadleigh was a 
descendant of Robert Wadleigh of Exeter, 
New Hampshire, a member of the Provincial 
Legislature of Massachusetts. On the mater- 
nal side the ancestry was good. The maternal 
grandmother was the daughter of Ebenezer 
Kezar, who, it is related, concealed the girl 
whom he afterwards married under a pile of 
boards, at the time Mrs. Duston was captured 
by the Indians in 1607. He was identified with 
the early history of Sutton in many ways. To 
John and Susan Wadleigh Pillsbury were born 
five children, to-wit: Simon Wadleigh Pills- 
bury, born June 22, 1812; George Alfred. Au- 
gust 20, 1816; Dolly Wadleigh. September 6, 
1818; John Sargent, July 20, 1S27, and Benja- 
min Franklin. March 20, 1831. All the chil- 
dren received the common school education of 
those days; but Simon W., whose natural 
fondness for study distinguished him as a 
young man, gave his attention to special 
branches of study, particularly mathematics, 
in which he became known as one of. if not the 
best, in the State. He delivered the first lec- 
ture in Sutton on the subject of temperance; 
but too much study wore down his health, and 
he died in 1836, cutting short a promising 
future. Of the other brothers, John Sargent is 
too well known to need mention, as he is the 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



153 



distinguished ex-Governor J. S. Pillsbury of 
Minnesota. The remaining brother, Benjamin 
F. Pillsbury, remained in Sutton until 1878, 
where he filled many places of trust, being 
elected selectman, town treasurer and a mem- 
ber of the Legislature for a series of years. In 
1878 Benjamin F. Pillsbury removed to Gran- 
ite Falls, Minnesota, where he was engaged 
in an extensive lumber, farming and elevator 
business until his death, in October, 1890. 
George A. Pillsbury, who was born at Sut- 
ton, New Hampshire, August -!», 1810, received 
only the meager common school education of 
seventy five years ago, when the children were 
taught "to read, write and cipher." Of a very 
quick and active temperament, he, in early life, 
formed a determined purpose to enter business 
for himself. At the age of eighteen he became 
a clerk to a Boston merchant. After a year's 
experience there he returned to Sutton and 
entered into the manufacture of stoves anil 
sheet iron ware, in company with a cousin, 
John C. Pillsbury. lie continued in this busi- 
ness until February. 1840, when he went to 
Warner, New Hampshire, into the store of 
John H. Pearson, where he remained until the 
following July, when lie purchased the busi- 
ness on his own account and continued in it 
for some eight years. In the spring of IMS 
he entered a wholesale dry goods house in 
Boston, and in 1S40 again returned to War 
ner and engaged in busiuess there until tin- 
spring of 1851, when he sold out his interest 
and went out of the mercantile business en 
tirely. During his residence in Warner he 
was postmaster from 1844 to 1S4'.I; was select- 
man in 1847 and 1849; town treasurer in 1849. 
and a Representative to the State Legislature 
in 1850 and 1851. He was also selected as 
chairman of the committee appointed to build 
the Merrimack county jail in Concord in 1851 
and 1852, and had the general superintendence 
of the construction of the work, which was 
most faithfully done. In November, 1851, Mr. 
Pillsbury was appointed purchasing agenl and 
adjuster of the Concord railroad, and com- 
menced his duties the following December, 
having in the meantime moved his family tit 
Concord. For nearly twenty-four years lie oc- 



cupied this position, and discharged its duties 
with rare business ability, showing wise judg- 
ment in all his purchases, which amounted to 
millions of dollars, and settling more cases of 
claims against the corporation for alleged in- 
juries to persons and property than all the 
other officers of the road. He had great quick- 
ness of perception and promptness in action, 
two wonderful business qualities, which, when 
rightly used, always bring success. Mr. Pills- 
bury was prominent in the councils of the Dem- 
ocratic party until the War of the Rebellion, 
when he was an ardent supporter of Lincoln 
for President. From that time on lie was 
a strong Republican. During the twenty- 
seven years' residence of Mr. Pillsbury in 
Concord he acquired a position of great 
prominence and distinction in the State 
of New Hampshire. He became one of 
the men of the State to whom were confided 
matters of weight and importance. In busi- 
ness, education, morality and religion his coun- 
sels were eagerly sought. When the high 
school at Concord and other school buildings 
throughout the city were projected and erected 
Mr. Pillsbury, on account of his well recog 
nized business prudence, common sense, judg- 
ment and integrity, was pushed to the front 
to superintend their construction. He was also 
interested in the erection of several of the 
handsomest business blocks upon the principal 
streets of the city; and several fine resideuces 
in the city were built by him. In the year 
1804 Mr. Pillsbury. with others, established the 
First National Bank of Concord. From the 
tirst he was one of the directors, and in 1800 
became its president, which position he held 
until his departure from the State. He was 
also more instrumental than any other person 
in organizing the National Savings Bank of 
Concord in 1807. Of tins bank he was the first 
president, and held the position until 1X74, 
when he resigned. During Mr. Pillsbury's man- 
agement of the First National Bank it became, 
in proportion to its capital stock, the strongest 
bank in the State. Up to December, 1873, 
when the treasurer was discovered to be a de- 
faulter to a large amount, the savings bank 
was one of the most successful in the State; 



t54 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



but this defalcation, with the general crash in 
business, required its closing up. Its total de- 
posits up to the time mentioned exceeded 
$3,000,000. The bank finally paid its depos- 
itors nearly dollar for dollar and interest, not- 
withstanding the large defalcation by its treas- 
urer. During the years 1S71 and 1872 Mr. 
Pillsbury was again elected a member of the 
Legislature of New Hampshire, and was a 
member of some of the most important Legisla- 
tive committees. For several years he was a 
member of the city council of Concord, and in 
1870 was elected mayor of the city, to which 
position he was re-elected upon the expiration 
of his first term of office. On May 9, 1811, Mr. 
Pillsbury was married to Margaret S. t'arleton. 
To them were born three children, a daughter, 
who died in infancy, and two sons, Charles A. 
Pillsbury. "the flour king." who died Septem- 
ber 17, 189!), and Fred C. Pillsbury. a most 
promising young man, whose sudden death 
from diphtheria on May 15, 1892, was so deeply 
lamented. In 1869 Charles A. Pillsbury came 
to this city and shortly after engaged in the 
milling business. In 1870 his younger brother, 
Fred C. Pillsbury, also located in Minneapolis. 
During all of these years Coventor Pillsbury 
had been a prominent citizen of the State. The 
fact that George A. Pillsbury's sons were en- 
gaged in successful business here and that his 
brother, John S. Pillsbury. resided here, and 
the further fact that he had large business 
interests here, were inducements which led 
him to consider giving up his home in Concord 
and removing to Minneapolis. When it became 
known to the citizens of Concord that he was 
contemplating a removal to Minneapolis every 
effort was made to retain him in Concord. The 
struggle which went on in Mr. Pillsbury's 
mind was intense. The ties which bound him 
to Concord were many, lint finally his regard 
for his suns and brother determined the ques- 
tion, and in 1878 he made the removal. Prob- 
ably nd person ever left the city of Concord 
who received so many expressions of regret as 
did Mr. Pillsbury. Complimentary resolutions 
were unanimously passed by both branches of 
the city government and by the First National 
Panic Resolutions passed by the First Baptist 



church and society were ordered to be entered 
upon the records of each organization. The 
Webster Club, composed of fifty prominent 
business men of Concord, passed a series of 
resolutions expressive of regret for his de- 
parture from the State. A similar testimonial 
was presented to Mr. Pillsbury which bore the 
signatures of more than three hundred of the 
leading professional and business men of the 
city, among whom were all the ex-mayors liv- 
ing, all the clergymen, all the members of 
both branches of the city government, all the 
bank presidents and officers, twenty-six law- 
yers, twenty physicians, and nearly all of the 
business men of the city. On the evening of 
their departure from Concord, Mr. and Mrs. 
Pillsbury were given a public reception and 
were presented with an elegant bronze statue. 
Upon coming to Minneapolis Mr. Pillsbury at 
once entered actively into the milling business 
I in which he had been long interested) in the 
firm of C. A. Pillsbury & Co. His superior 
business ability was at once recognized on all 
sides, and the same prominence which he held 
in Concord was accorded him in Minneapolis. 
In a short time he became identified in many 
public and private matters in the city. The cit- 
izens at once saw his fitness for public position, 
and shortly after his arrival in Minneapolis 
he was made a member of the board of educa- 
tion. On April ::, 188::, he was elected an 
alderman from the Fifth ward, and shortly 
after made president of the city council, lb' 
was also a member of the board of park com 
missioners and of the waterworks board. These 
positions he held until April, 1884, when he 
was elected mayor of the city. These elections 
of Mr. Pillsbury were not of his own forward- 
ing, but he was in both instances chosen by the 
people because of his recognized fitness, and 
he accepted the positions from a sense of pub- 
lic duty. The services which Mr. Pillsbury 
rendered as mayor will ever give him distinc- 
tion. At that time Minneapolis was thickly 
studded with saloons. Not only were saloons 
numerous throughout the settled parts of the 
cily. but they abounded in the suburbs, at Mill 
nehaha and around the numerous beautiful 
lakes which environ the city. Every road 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



IS: 



coming into the city had its two or three or 
more saloons to tempt the traveler and draw 
the sporting classes. The temperance people 
were aroused and the cry on the lips of all 
respectable people was: "What can be done!" 
Only two remedies were suggested, one was 
prohibition, the other high license. But pro- 
hibition could not be realized in Minneapolis 
any more than in any other city of any con- 
siderable size. Then it was that George A. 
Pillsbury conceived a method of dealing with 
the liquor question that had never been at- 
tempted before, and that was the famous "pa- 
trol limit system," — a method which had not 
before entered the heads of the various stu- 
dents of temperance reform. Mr. Pillsbury be- 
lieved in high license, but he did not think 
that sufficient in itself. In his first message 
to the city council he came out boldly in favor 
of an ordinance which should require not only 
a high license, but one which should exclude 
the selling of liquor everywhere in the city 
except on a few "down town" streets, where 
there was a constant and continuous police 
patrol. The practicability and common sense 
of the thing at once commended it to all think- 
ing people. Only the extreme prohibitionists 
and the extreme liquor men were opposed to 
it. Mr. Pillsbury pressed the issue with bold- 
ness and rare business sense. He urged (lie 
advantages that would come to the city and to 
property by making the residential and subur- 
ban parts of the city free from the evils and 
effects of saloons and liquor. He urged the ad- 
vantages that would come by confining the 
sale of liquor to a comparatively small area in 
the business part of the city where there was 
constant police surveillance. The so-called 
"patrol limit" ordinance was passed in re- 
sponse to his suggestion. There is not space 
in this sketch to go into detail as to the con 
troversy which the adoption of this new prin- 
ciple involved. It is sufficient to say that after 
bitter attacks from the extreme liquor men 
and the prohibitionists the method was sus 
tained both by public sentiment and the 
highest courts of the State, and what was orig- 
inally passed as a city ordinance was subse- 
quently ratified by the State Legislature and 



lias now become a part of the permanent char 
tec of Minneapolis, never again to be ques- 
tioned. Minneapolis has become famous 
among students of social science as being the 
first city to adopt this new and practical meth- 
od of dealing with the liquor question. Other 
cities have adopted it and the idea is fast be- 
coming popular. For several years Mr. Pills 
bury was president of the Board of Trade, 
president of the Free Dispensary, and presi- 
dent of the Minnesota Baptist State Associa- 
tion. At the time of his death and for several 
years prior thereto he was president of the 
Northwestern National Bank and one of the 
trustees of the Hennepin County Savings 
Bank. He also held positions in many private 
corporations and societies, and until within a 
few months prior to his death his mind and 
thoughts were occupied with many business 
cares. The last years of Mr. Pillsbury's life 
were passed in caring for his property and do- 
ing good works for others. He took special 
interest in the work of the Baptist Church (of 
which he was a life-long member) both at home 
and throughout the country, and responded to 
its calls both with his time and his money. 
Old age stole gently upon him and he passed 
away peaceably at his home July 17th, 1898. 
Although Mr. Pillsbury was a successful man, 
both in business and as a public official, he 
will be remembered perhaps most of all for his 
work in the line of benevolences. Early in life 
he adopted the principle that a man should do 
as much good as he could in this world, and in 
case he was fortunate enough to accumulate 
property that he should, as far as possible, 
act as his own administrator, a view which met 
the cordial support of his wife and his two 
sons. In an address at Concord in 1891, when 
he presented to the city in the name of his 
wife the magnificent Margaret Pillsbury hos- 
pital, to which we are about to refer, he used 
these words: "I have for many years been 
of the opinion that it was the duty of every 
one, as far as possible, to administer upon his 
own estate. We have had frequent examples 
where the ablest of lawyers have failed to 
draw a will that would be sustained by the 
courts. I have also noticed, during mv some- 



15^ 



BIOUBAFHY OF MINNESOTA. 



what prolonged life, that property left to chil- 
dren has proved, I think, in a majority of cases, 
a curse father llian a blessing, especially 
where such children are possessed of strong 
bodies and a good education." Consequently 
we find a series of benevolent acts running 
through his career. In Concord he engaged 
actively in establishing the Centennial Home 
for the Aged, making large contributions 
thereto and serving as a trustee. He was also 
a generous giver to the New Hampshire Or- 
phans' Home at Franklin, and was a trustee 
from the time of its foundation until he left 
the State. The magnificent bell in the tower 
of the Board of Trade Building at Concord and 
the handsome organ in the First Baptist 
Church of Concord were gifts from him and 
his son, Charles A. Pillsbury. He also made 
[several large contributions towards building 
and endowing Colby Academy at New Lon 
don, New Hampshire. In 1886 Mr. Pillsbury 
was chairman of the committee of construction 
of the First Baptist church of .Minneapolis, 
and the large and handsome organ uow in that 
church was a gift from Mr. Pillsbury, his wife 
and their two sons, Charles A., and Fred C. 
Shortly after Mr. Pillsbury came to Minnesota 
he became interested in the academy at Owa- 
tonna, of which he was elected one of the trus- 
tees. This academy was established under 
Baptist auspices, by an act of the Territory of 
Minnesota, enacted in L856. Prior to the time 
when Mr. Pillsbury became interested in the 
institution it had not flourished to the degree 
that its friends had anticipated, although it 
had nevertheless done a good work. Mr. Pills- 
bury was always a firm believer in academies, 
"the poor man's college," as a means of edu- 
cation, and when he became interested in this 
institution and saw the held which it might 
occupy if properly managed and endowed, he 
determined to do what he could to put it on 
a satisfactory basis. To do this required not 
only new buildings, but also funds to endow 
and support it. Mr. Pillsbury at once applied 
to the affairs of this institution the same 
thought, attention and business judgment that 
he gave to his private affairs. As the needs 
of the institution impressed themselves upon 



him he determined to meet them. His lirsi 
large gifl to the institution was the erection 
of a ladies' hall, which was named "Pillsbury 
Hall." In 1SS!) Mr. Pillsbury erected for the 
instil ill ion I he new building, which com 
pares favorably with any academy building in 
the country. This building contains recitation 
rooms, library and reading-rooms, offices, 
chemical laboratory, gymnasium, bath-room. 
study-room, chapel and a spacious auditorium. 
Mr. Pillsbury also constructed a music hall, 
which is a gem of its sort. This building is a 
two-story brick structure, 80 by 40 feet. The 
design is very ornate and the building adds 
much lo l he campus. It contains a fire-proof 
library-room and has ample accommodations 
for the music department. In addition to this 
.Mr. Pillsbury erected a spacious brick drill 
hall, which has a clear floor 110 by 05 feet, and 
is admirably adapted to the purpose for which 
it is designed. In addition to the erection of 
the above buildings Mr. Pillsbury gave gener- 
ously to the institution, both of time and 
money. His giving was unostentatious, but 
outsiders who have some means of knowing es- 
timate that of money alone he gave in his life- 
time about $500,000 to the institution. In his 
will there was a further bequest to I he acad- 
emy of a quarter of a million dollars. His will 
also gave generous sums to various benevolent 
and charitable societies. Such acts as these 
sneak of the character of the man far better 
than any words we can add. In his many gifts 
lie went beyond the limits of ordinary benevo- 
lence and in his furtherance of great schemes 
for the support of religion and education and 
those things which make for the peace and 
well being of society he attained to the height 
of philanthropy. And it is no wonder that 
the friends of Owatonna Academy, in recogni- 
tion of his great services to the institution, a 
few years ago caused its name to be changed 
to Pillsbury Academy. In all of his prosperity 
.Mr. Pillsbury never forgot the home and 
friends of his youth, as do too many successful 
men. The towns of Sutton and Warner, in 
New Hampshire, where his early years were 
spent, and also the goodly city of Concord, 
where he passed the years of his maturer man- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



l D/ 



hood, were dear to him, and lie determined to 
show his regard for these places in sonic per- 
manent manner. In the town of Sutton, on 
the public ground and a short distance from 
the house in which he was horn, he erected, 
in 1890, a soldiers' monument in memory of the 
men of Sutton who served in the War of the 
Rebellion. This monument is constructed of 
granite and is surmounted with a granite 
statue, of heroic size, of a soldier at parade 
rest. The height, including the statue, is 
thirty-two feet. The bases, plinth and shaft 
arc handsomely carved with emblems, and a 
suitable inscription sets forth the purpose for 
which the monument was erected. The whole 
effect is very imposing. To the town of War- 
ner he presented the Pillsbury Free Library 
and filled the shelves thereof with books. This 
library is a very complete building of its kind, 
and is pointed to with pride and admiration 
by all wdio see it. The building is constructed 
of handsome pressed brick, with granite trim 
niings, is well lighted and ventilated, ami has 
all of the interior finishings and furnishings 
of the modern library building. In the suburbs 
of the city of Concord, on a pleasant site over- 
looking the beautiful valley of the Merrimac, 
and commanding an extensive view of hills 
and forest, stands a magnificent building of 
which any city might well be proud. This 
building is the Margaret Pillsbury General 
Hospital. A tablet at the entrance bears the 
inscription: "Erected by George Alfred Pills- 
bury in honor of his wife, Margaret Sprague 
Pillsbury, on the fiftieth anniversary of their 
marriage, 1891.'' This building is in ar- 
chitectural effect very imposing. It is 
one hundred and twenty-four feet long and 
seventy-five feet in width at the two ends, 
and is forty-five feet high, having two sto- 
ries and a basement, with slated roof and venti- 
lating cupola. The basement is of granite, and 
the walls of pressed brick with granite and 
terra cotta trimmings, and copper cornices. 
An examination of the interior shows it to be 
a modern and a model hospital, with all the 
arrangements and appliances that the most re- 
cent surgical and medical science could sug- 
gest. The cost of this building was not less 



than $fi0,000. No more graceful compliment 
could any husband ever pay to a faithful wife 
than the gift of a hospital for the sick and 
injured; nor could any more appropriate gift 
be given in honor of fifty years of happy mar- 
ried life than this. In bestowal of all these 
gifts to the public, as well as in the buildings 
at Owatonna, Mr. rillsbury not only furnished 
the means for the erection, but he personally 
superintended the making of the plans and the 
work of actual construction. 



JOHN LIND. 



To be elected Governor of the State of 
Minnesota at any time is not a small honor; 
to be the first man elected to the place in op- 
position to the Republican party organization 
is even a more signal victory; to be chosen 
above and beyond partisan lines by the dis- 
criminating judgment of his fellow-citizens, 
at a time when all the other nominees of the 
opposing party, save the gubernatorial, were 
elected by more or less handsome majorities, 
is a distinction such as has been accorded to 
few men in any State. It was under such cir- 
cumstances that John Lind was inaugurated 
Governor of Minnesota in January, 1899. Gov- 
ernor Lind was born at Kanna, Province of 
Smaland, Sweden, March 25, 1851. His par 
ents were Gustav and Catherine (Johnson) 
Lind. Gustav Lind, like his ancestors for sev- 
eral generations, was a farmer, and also filled 
local offices in the community where he lived, 
being deputy sheriff of the borough for several 
years. The family emigrated to America in 
1807, when John was thirteen years of age, and 
settled in Goodhue county, Minnesota. Here 
young John, laboring to assist in the support 
of the family, lost his left hand by an accident 
which, perhaps, turned the current of his ca- 
reer, as now, illy fitted to compete with his 
fellows in the material world, he was urged to 
more assiduity in the pursuit of his studies. 
He spent as much of his time in school as pos- 
sible, and at sixteen he was granted a certifi- 
cate entitling him to teach in the public- 
schools. He taught one vear in Sibley county, 



158 



MIOORAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



but not being satisfied with the compensation 
in a new country at that time, he, in 1873, took 
up his residence in New Ulm, where he has 
since resided, respected and honored among 
men. By the dint of hard study, industry and 
strict economy, he was aide to attend the State 
University in 1875 and 1870, having in mind 
then the practice of the law. Utilizing all his 
opportunities for private study and privileged 
as he was to work in the office of a New Ulm 
practitioner, he was admitted to the bar im- 
mediately upon leaving the university, at the 
age of twenty-one. In 1877 he began the prac- 
tice of law and, taking an active interest in 
public life, was chosen superintendent of 
schools of Brown county. This position he 
held for two years, declining a re-nomination 
in order that he might devote himself entirely 
to the profession upon the adoption of which 
he had now fully determined, namely, the law. 
In 1881, under the administration of Garfield 
and Arthur, he was made receiver of the land 
office at Tracy. Lyon county, which position he 
held until the election of President Cleveland, 
still being able, however, to care for his pri- 
vate practice at New Ulm. The country was 
tilling up rapidly and the work of the courts 
incidentally increased. Mr. Lind's natural tal- 
ent and diligence made him a name more than 
local, and his prosecution of several suits, 
notably those against railroad companies, won 
him not a little renown. He was also active in 
the councils ef the Republican parly, and in 
1880 he was nominated to represent the Second 
District in the Federal Congress. The Second 
District then comprised twenty counties — 
practically all of Southwestern Minnesota. 
That was a hard fought campaign, Dr. A. A. 
Ames of Minneapolis coming within a very 
small margin of defeating A. R. McGill for 
Governor, but Mr. Lind was elected by a splen- 
did plurality. Two years later he was re-nomi- 
nated and again elected, his adversary this 
time being Col. Morton S. Wilkinson, a veteran 
leader, who had been one of Minnesota's three 
representatives in the Federal House from 
1869 to 1871, and United States Senator during 
the Avar. He took an active interest in the 
affairs of the Indians and secured the passage 



of a bill establishing seven Indian schools in 
various parts of the country, one of them 
being located at Pipestone, in this State. An- 
other sphere of work of local importance was 
the pushing of some old claims for the depre- 
dations of the Indians during the outbreak of 
L862. He secured the payment of many of 
these for the people of the Second District 
who had suffered during that uprising. One 
of the greatest economies which he secured to 
the people of the State, however, was the pas- 
sage of the bill for the reorganization of the 
Federal Courts of the District of Minnesota, 
which is commonly known to this day as the 
"bind Bill." Previous to its passage all ses- 
sions of the United States Courts in this Stall' 
had been held in St. Paul, entailing long sit- 
tings, delays in trials and long journeys, in- 
creasing the cost to litigants living remote 
from the Capital. Mr. Lind's bill provided for 
terms as now held at Minneapolis. Mankato, 
Winona and Fergus Falls, as well as an St. 
Paul. Mr. Lind was a strenuous fighter for 
the integrity and enforcement of the Inter- 
slate Commerce Act in its efforts to prevent 
discriminations in favor of persons or places. 
He had added to it amendments which made 
it possible for the commission to procure evi- 
dence more efficiently, and also made several 
battles in the courts to secure for the millers 
in the smaller centers of the Stale, rates more 
fair when compared with the millers of Minne- 
apolis, who had been granted certain special 
privileges. Mr. Lind was also instrumental in 
securing a great reform in railroad manage 
ment and equipment, which is saving human 
life and limb hourly. That is, the automatic 
coupler and power-brake bill, so-called, which 
was passed, and directed all railroads to pro- 
vide their cars with automatic couplers of uni- 
form type, and to have at least a certain num- 
ber of cars of each train equipped with air 
or other power brakes, so as to obviate the use 
of hand brakes, which were very dangerous in 
icy or sleety weather. This bill was opposed 
by a strong and insistent lobby, led by the 
Pennsylvania Railroad Company, but after a 
hard contest the lobby was beaten and Mr. 
Lind's bill became a law. Another bill of com- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



159 



menial value to the Northwest made Minne- 
apolis a port of entry. Mr. Lind was a con- 
ceded authority in the House on the subjects 
concerned with the public lauds — Congress- 
man Payson of Illinois being the only man 
on the floor considered his peer in this special 
branch of so much importance to the West. 
In the contest over the tariff Mr. Lind was a 
hard fighter, and showed his independence by 
declining to be bound by the declarations of 
the Republican caucus. He fought the tariff 
on lumber because, as he said, it commit led 
the Nation to the idiocy of destroying its own 
forests rather than those of other people. He 
fought for free sugar, for free materials for 
making binding twine, and for free twine. In 
1890 Mr. Lind was elected a third time, defeat 
ing Gen. James H. Baker of Garden City. In 

1892 he declined to become a candidate again, 
for personal reasons, and the present Congress- 
man, James T. McCleary, then Professor of 
Political Economy in the State Normal School 
at Mankato, was nominated and elected to suc- 
ceed Mr. Lind. The platform adopted at Man- 
kato accorded the retiring Congressman this 
compliment: "We recognize in Hon. John 
Lind, our present Member of Congress, an able 
and efficient representative, and trust that his 
voluntary retirement from the Held of active 
legislative duty will be only temporary." In 

1893 Governor Nelson appointed Mr. Lind, 
who had returned to the practice of law at 
New rim, a regent of the University of Minne- 
sota. Mr. Lind was an early recruit to the 
financial policy espoused by Senator Teller and 
other Silver Republicans. In 1896 the Demo- 
cratic and People's party nominated him for 
Governor, and he made a splendid run, David 
B. Clough defeating him by only a small ma- 
jority of about three thousand votes. In the 
spring of ISO -, when President McKinley 
called for volunteers to defend the National 
honor and avenge the destruction of the Maine, 
John Lind, at the sacrifice of his law practice, 
tendered his services to Governor Clough in 
any capacity in which he might be available. 
Governor Clough, at the request of Colonel 
Bobleter. in command of the Twelfth Minne- 
sota, made Mr. Lind regimental quartermas- 



ter with the rank of first lieutenant. His 
record as quartermaster was attested by his 
popularity with the regiment, which had a 
chance at Chattanooga to compare with other 
standards the efficiency of Mr. Lind's arduous 
labors in keeping the men well equipped and 
provisioned. It was while the Twelfth Regi- 
ment was encamped at Camp Thomas, Chicka- 
mauga National Park, that the Democratic 
People's and Silver Republican parties, in 
State Convention, unanimously nominated Mr. 
Lind for Governor. It was his desire, after the 
defeat of 1896, not to again enter the field of 
politics, but so unanimous was the call, and so 
insistent were the friends who had supported 
him so warmly in previous campaigns, that Mr. 
Lind at last put aside his desire for political 
retirement and consented to make the race, 
subject to the necessary limitations of his mili- 
tary service. With the surrender of Santiago 
and the subsequent return of the Minnesota 
troops from the South, Mr. Lind was enabled 
to make two short series of speeches in a few 
of the cities and towns of the State. There has 
rarely been such a series of popular demon- 
strations of personal admiration and sympathy. 
These tours, brief as they were, were splendid 
auguries of the magnificent vote which the 
men of Minnesota gave him on election day. 
This is the public and political career, epito- 
mized, of the man who has fought his way. 
despite rebuffs and temporary reverses, to at- 
tain success at last and a full realization of 
the fact that "he cannot appreciate victory 
who has not suffered defeat." Governor Lind's 
energies have not been spent alone in politics 
and public affairs. He has had a lucrative 
practice at the bar, and has not sacrificed it in 
the public service. New Ulm is the center of a 
thriving farming community, prettily situated 
in the picturesque valley of the Minnesota, and 
is such a town as might well be selected for the 
home of a man of Governor Lind's character, 
earnest, faithful and unaffected. Governor 
Lind has been identified with some of the best 
institutions of New Ulm. He has served as 
director in the Brown County Bank, and was 
one of the committee of five New Ulm men who 
had charge of the construction of the Minne- 



i6o 



KIOOKAIMIY OF MINNESOTA. 



apolis, New I 1m & Southwestern railroad and 
other enterprises that have materially bene- 
fited his home town. Governor Lind was mar- 
ried, in 1ST!». to Miss Alice A. Shepard, the 
daughter of a then prominent citizen of Blue 
Earth county, since removed to California. He, 
Richard Shepard, was a soldier of the Onion 
army in the Civil War. His father also fought 
for the young Republic in the War of 1812, 
while his grandfather was a soldier in the Rev- 
olutionary War. To Governor ami Mis. Lind 
have been born three children, Norman, Jenm 
and Winfred. The tirst named is now a stu- 
dent at the State University, and with four 
generations of soldiers before him, might be 
looked for to enter a military career rather 
than that of politics, in which his father has 
attained his greatest fame. 



ANTHONY KELLY. 



Anthony Kelly, late merchant and represen- 
tative citizen of Minneapolis, was a native of 
Ireland, born at Swinford, County Mayo, Au- 
gust 25, 1832. His early boyhood was spent in 
his native island, but when he was fifteen 
years of age he came with his parents to Amer- 
ica, and settled near Montreal, Canada. Very 
early in life he manifested an ardent taste for 
a life of active usefulness. After acquiring a 
good common school education and the rudi- 
ments of a business training he, while still 
quite young, came to the United States and 
finally located at Macon, Georgia, where he 
opened a retail grocery store, which he con- 
ducted for several years. Having sold his store 
in Macon, Mr. Kelly came to Minnesota on a 
visit to his brothers, then living in Minneap- 
olis. Upon his arrival he was so thoroughly 
impressed with the location, the growing im- 
portance of the young town and the opportu- 
nities it offered for a business career that he 
soon decided to locate there permanently. He 
opened a retail grocery store, associated him- 
self in partnership with his brother, P. H. 
Kelly, and began the business career in Minne- 
apolis in which he became so prominent. The 



Kelly brothers were popular and successful 
from the first. They were energetic and used 
sound sense in the conduct of their business, 
and prospered constantly. In a comparatively 
brief time they had outgrown their original 
limited quarters, erected a more commodious 
building and had largely increased the scope 
and extent of their operations. In 1S(!3, P. H. 
Kelly withdrew from the firm and went to St. 
Paul. Mr. Anthony Kelly continued the busi- 
ness in Minneapolis on his own account for 
three years, when he formed a partnership 
with II. W. Wagner, the firm name becoming- 
Anthony Kelly & Company. It soon became 
the largest grocery house in the city. As time 
passed and business increased Mr. Kelly saw 
the necessity and importance of extending the 
character and field of his operations, and after 
opening up in the new building he abandoned 
the retail grocery business and engaged in the 
wholesale trade. Anthony Kelly was the pio- 
neer wholesale grocer of Minneapolis. The 
venture was so successful aud the business 
expanded so rapidly that in a comparatively 
short time the firm was compelled to find 
larger quarters, and it built and removed to 
the large brick and stone structure which was 
the site of its operations thereafter, and which 
was always recognized as one of the leading- 
business institutions of the city. The business 
of the firm of Anthony Kelly & Company 
developed into large proportions and gradually 
increased until it extended over all the vast 
territory paying business tribute to Minneap- 
olis. Mr. Kelly was always recognized as the 
leading and controlling spirit of the house, 
and it was his master hand which guided aud 
directed its work. So much for Anthony Kel- 
ly's career as a business man. Put during all 
of the long period referred to he contrived to 
find time in the midst of his engrossing busi- 
ness activities to take an active part in the 
local affairs of his city. Energetic, broad- 
minded, public-spirited, liberal in his views, 
and of a high order of intelligence, his aid was 
sought and his hand was in every movement 
to build up the interests and institutions of 
the city. There was never a fight for the wel- 
fare of the city of Minneapolis in which he did 





^$fe^r 




BIOGEAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



if. i 



not engage — never a worthy enterprise which 
he did not promote. He was always earnestly 
■ — lint unostentatiously, as becomes a right- 
minded man — interested in every philanthropic 
enterprise and prominently identified with 
every movement of the kind in the city. No 
other man ever gave more liberally of his time, 
energies and money to further worthy char- 
itable objects. Wherever and whenever hu- 
man suffering and misery could be ameliorated 
by anything he could do, he was ready with 
voice and hand and purse, and did what he 
could. He gave freely and liberally, but never 
purposely "to be seen of men," and very many 
of his benefactions and charities were never 
known to the world — and he did not wish that 
they should be. Anthony Kelly was not one 
to vaunt or parade himself. He disliked no- 
toriety, sought no cheap distinctions, and 
hated all insincerity, sham, and pretense. He 
never posed as a "reformer," although no 
other man in the city ever did more for real 
reforms and the improvement of society and 
humanity. People who knew him knew just 
where to find him, and that what he said he 
meant. He had hosts of admiring friends, es- 
pecially among the old settlers and his long- 
time associates, and there was many a deep 
and heartfelt pang of sorrow when, on that 
fine June morning in 1899, the message was 
flashed over the wires throughout the country 
— ''Anthony Kelly is dead." In business af- 
fairs generally Mr. Kelly had become very 
prominent — a factor in the development of 1 1 1 • • 
material interests of Minneapolis. At the time 
of his death he was vice-president of the 
Northwestern National Hank, and, up to the 
time of the reorganization of the Minneapolis 
General Electric Company, had been its presi- 
dent and directing mind. He was also a stock- 
holder in several other important business or- 
ganizations. He was a trustee of the Hill Sem- 
inary, and, for about seven years, was one of 
the directors and vice president of the board 
of managers of the State Institute for Defec- 
tives at Faribault. In politics he was a staunch 
Democrat, but never an office seeker or a po- 
litical office holder. He was a humble, but ear- 
nest and consistent believer in the Catholic 



faith, but tolerant and charitable toward all 
Christian religions. Mr. Kelly was the inti- 
mate friend and confidant, as well as the asso 
ciate, of the best men who have shaped the 
destinies of Minneapolis. He had rare social 
tastes and qualities, and his great fund of in- 
formation, the spice of his ready wit, his fluent 
and animated style of conversation, and his 
charming amiability, made him a most delight- 
ful entertainer and companion. In the sacred 
precincts of his home, however, he was at his 
best. Here his life was an ideal one. He 
loved his family with all the fervor of his 
affectionate nature, and with them he found 
his highest pleasures. He was a profound 
student and very fond of literary pursuits. He 
read and spoke German fluently, and had a 
good knowledge of French and Spanish, and 
had spoken these languages in their native 
countries. Fond of travel and investigation he 
gratified these tastes to a great extent. 
He was familiar with almost every part of the 
United States, had repeatedly visited the land 
of his birth and made several excursions 
through the continent of Europe. With the 
capacity to appreciate and remember what he 
saw, these investigations added to his great 
slock of valuable knowledge. Anthony Kelly 
died in his adopted city, which he had so much 
helped to build. May 31, 1899. His death 
created a feeling of sorrow genuine and wide- 
spread, lie was sixty-seven years of age, and 
in active and successful business life up to the 
time of his death, but somehow it seemed that 
his calling away was untimely. There seemed 
to be much more that he could do for his city, 
his State and his fellow men. The event was 
of public importance; the press, the pulpit, the 
business associations, etc., all expressed the 
general sorrow, and commented upon the char 
acter of the deceased in the warmest terms. 
Said the St. Paul Globe of July 7th: 

"Anthony Kelly was one of the finest types 
of American citizens, and one of the gentlest, 
and, in thought and deed, one of the most 
upright men that ever graced a Christian com- 
munity. He was indeed an ideal man. Re- 
ligious in the truest sense in which the spirit 
of God is made to descend into the hearts of 



1 62 



BIOORABnY OF MINNESOTA. 



iiu-ii through the influence of faith in the 
Christian teaching, he was at the same time a 
thoughtful, patriotic citizen, ever devoted to 
the welfare of city, State and Nation, and 
anxious in every way within liis reach to pro 
mote the happiness and temporal welfare of 
his fellow man. 

No man ever heard from the lips of An- 
thony Kelly an unkind or uncharitable ex- 
pression concerning another. His word was 
indeed his bond; and in small matters as well 
as in large, he was the very spirit of manliness 
and personal probity. 

That such a man should have it within him 
to secure a high measure of business success 
is proof that the highest commercial ability 
may be united with those qualities which pre- 
serve men in the faith and innocence and 
purity of their younger days." 

Ex-Governor John S. Pillsbury, who had 

long and intimately known Mr. Kelly, wrote: 

"I have known him as few men knew him. 
We began our struggle in Minneapolis about 
the same time. I can easily recall the vigor- 
ous, intelligent, ambitious, determined young 
man, of fifty years ago. There are none who 
have known him in a social way or in business, 
who can truthfully say that they ever saw him 
do an unmanly or dishonest act. He died, pre- 
sumably, a wealthy man, but what he got in 
the way of worldly goods, he got honestly. He 
was not pulling others down while he was 
building himself up. He was always a great 
respecter of honest toil; he had no patience 
with the idler or the drone. He believed God 
placed man here for a useful career. He was 
thoroughly honest and did not know how to 
act in anything but an honest manner. He 
grew to be a better man every day he lived, 
and you could see it as the years passed by. 
I always found him a high-toned gentleman, 
quiet and unostentatious, and it was a genuine 
pleasure to do business with him. Mr. Kelly 
was always a public spirited man; you could 
always depend upon him to do his part. When 
there were but few of us, we had to look after 
public matters, and we worked together 
through the troubles incident to pioneer days. 
Mr. Kelly was a positive man, and his yea was 
yea. his nay, nay. He was a man who expected 
people to do right by him, for he always did 
right by them, and he would not brook de- 
ception. He was not a visionary man; he 
always lived within his means. He was kind 
to the poor, being especially interested in the 
poor among the people of his own church." 



Mr. Kelly was married in Minneapolis April 
20, 1863, to Annie Willey, widow of U. S. 
Willey, a prominent attorney of the city in 
early limes. .Mrs. Kelly was a daughter of 
Wm. < 'alder Haymond, a renowned lawyer of 
West Virginia, where she was born. Of the 
marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, always one 
of rare felicity, were born two sons and four 
daughters. 



JOHN It. SANBORN. 



On the 2d of March, 1632, the good ship 
"William and Prances" sailed from England, 
and on the 3d of June following she landed in 
Boston. In her passenger list were three 
brothers, John, William and Stephen Sanborn, 
and their mother's father, Stephen Bachiller. 
These brothers were the progenitors of the 
great family of Sanborns, scattered through- 
out the United States. They were among the 
early colonists, coming to the new world less 
than twelve years after the landing of the 
"Mayflower," and settling in the town of 
Hampton, New Hampshire, which continued 
to be the undivided home of the family until 
the middle of the Eighteenth Century. 
Stephen Bachiller became one of the famous 
and powerful Puritan ministers, whose stern 
morality contributed much of value to the 
firmness and integrity of the New England 
character. At length, Reuben Sanborn — a 
descendant of William, of the original emi- 
grants — with his sons, Eliphalet and Reuben, 
removed to Epsom, New Hampshire, and ac- 
quired the Sanborn homestead, which has 
remained continuously in possession of the 
family for a hundred and fifty years. Gen. 
John Benjamin Sanborn, the principal sub- 
ject of this sketch, was born on this home- 
stead December 5, 1820, the son of Frederick 
Sanborn, a man of estimable qualities, and 
Lucy L. Sargent, a native of I'ittsfield, New 
Hampshire, whose strength of character and 
purity of life were adorned by exceptional 
personal charms and graces. His great-grand- 
father, Eliphalet Sanborn, served under Gen- 
eral Wolfe in the war against the French and 



** 
4 









£16S/,,J, 






#24/ /&^/7/v t W^t, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA 



163 



Indians, and in the Continental army during 
the struggle for American independence. His 
maternal grandfather, Benjamin Sargent, also 
served in the Revolutionary war, first as a 
drummer boy, aud last as a soldier in the ranks 
of fighting men. Having in his veins the blood 
of patriots and heroes, mixed with that of 
Puritan ancestry, it is not surprising that the 
hoy born at Epsom seventy-three years ago, 
should develop into the strong man, the gal- 
lant soldier and the upright citizen, and 
achieve the eminence in military and civic life 
that General Sanborn has attained. His 
boyhood was passed on his fat tier's farm, 
at the kind of work and in the manner 
which contributed to the vigor of both body 
and mind. His common school education term- 
inated when he was sixteen years of age, and 
for the following six years lie devoted himself 
exclusively to carrying on the farm and the 
manufacture of lumber. At the age of twenty- 
two he suddenly changed his whole purpose in 
life and decided to obtain an education and 
qualify himself for the practice of the law. 
He at once fitted for college at the academies 
of Pembroke, New Hampshire, and Thetford, 
Vermont, and entered Dartmouth College in 
the autumn of 1851, where he remained during 
that term. On account of his mature years 
the leading members of the bar at Concord, 
New Hampshire, Hon. Franklin Pierce, Judge 
Asa Fowler and Hon. Ira Peverley, advised him 
to abandon his college course and devote him- 
self to the study of the law at once. This plan 
he pursued and was admitted to the bar of the 
Superior Court in Concord at the July Term, 
1854, having studied continuously from 1851 
in the office of Hon. Asa Fowler. At this time 
he was twenty-seven years old, and in the 
latter part of November following he left his 
native State, in company with Theodore 
French of Concord, New Hampshire, to estab- 
lish a new home in the more promising field of 
the Northwest. He settled in the City of SI. 
Paul, of which place he has remained a citizen 
continuously from that time to the present. 
and where he has constantly practiced his 
profession, except when engaged in the public 
service. In the ensuing fortv-five years Gen- 



eral Sanborn has become so identified with 
the great Northwest as to be a part of the very 
fibre of its growth, a contributor to its fame 
and a beneficiary of its boundless resources. 
During this period he has been a member of 
the following law firms, viz: Sanborn & 
French; Sanborn, French & Lund; Sanborn 
& Lund; Sanborn & King, at Washington, D. 
C; John B. & W. II. Sanborn, which firm in- 
cluded Edward P. Sanborn as a partner for a 
portion of its existence; and John B. & E. P. 
Sanborn, which firm still exists. The reputa- 
tion and strength of all these firms have been 
far above the average, and each and all have 
been successful ill a marked degree. From 
1854 to 1861 a law business had been estab- 
lished which was equal in its extent, and in 
the profits derived therefrom, to any exist in»- 
in the State at that time, and when General 
Sanborn had terminated his public service in 
1868, he again immediately engaged in the 
practice of the law in connection with the 
firms above mentioned with equal or greater 
success than had attended his efforts prior to 
the War of the Rebellion. In conformity to 
the custom of the new States of the Northwest, 
of making the young lawyers the law makers. 
Mr. Sanborn was elected a member of the 
Lower House of the Legislature in 1859, and 
of the State Senate in 1860. He was made 
Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the 
House iii 1S59, and aided by his able commit- 
tee, succeeded iii practically reorganizing the 
whole State government during that session; 
school districts, towns, counties, were all re- 
organized upoD a more economical plan, which 
aided to bring credit and prosperity to the 
impoverished State, most of which laws, both 
in letter and spirit, still remain upon the 
Statute book. During this session he was 
voted for in the Republican caucus for candi- 
date for the United States Senate and lacked 
but a few votes of the nomination, which was 
equivalent to an election. At the very opening 
of the Rebellion he was appointed by Governor 
Ramsey to the laborious and responsible posi- 
tion, in time of war. of Adjutant General of 
the State of Minnesota and Acting Quarter- 
Master General, and in that capacity he or 



.64 



BlncRAPIIY (»F MINNESOTA. 



ganized and equipped the first five regiments 
of volunteer infantry raised in the State. At 
the Hose of tliis service and of the year L861, 
moved no doubt by the martial spirit derived 
from his ancestors, lie entered the military 
service of the United States as colonel of the 
Fourth Regiment, .Minnesota Infantry Volun- 
teers, in which service he remained until the 
last day of June, 1866. During this term of 
military service he held the rank of colonel of 
the Fourth Regiment of Minnesota Infantry 
Volunteers, brigadier general of volunteers 
from August 4, lsi;::, brevet major general of 
volunteers from February. 1865. He com- 
manded a brigade in action at the battles of 
luka, Corinth, in the Yazoo Pass Expedition. 
Raymond, .Jackson, Champion Hills. Black 
River, and in the sieges of Corinth and Vicks- 
burg, and a division at Port Gibson and in the 
Assault on Vicksburg on the 22d of May, lsi;:',. 
In the Battle of luka, September 19, 1862, he 
commanded, under the immediate eye of Gen- 
eral Rosecrans, and held his position, although 
losing 588 men killed and wounded, in an hour 
and ten minutes, out of his command of a little 
more than 2200. He was commended in gen- 
eral orders by General Rosecrans for his 
conduct in this battle, and appointed by Presi- 
dent Lincoln, brigadier general of volunteers. 
The appointment was made while the Senate 
was in session, and was not reached by the 
Senate for its action before adjournment, and 
hence did not become operative, and during 
the Vicksburg Campaign he still commanded 
his brigade and division with the rank of 
colonel only. His reputation acquired at luka 
was fully sustained in all the subsequent bat- 
tles in which he commanded during the war. 
At Champion Hills he received and carried 
into effect orders from General Grant in per 
son at the very crisis of the battle, which 
turned seeming defeat into decided victory. 
He built a pontoon bridge of cotton bales over 
the Black river, by which the army marched 
from Champion Hills to Vicksburg. He 
reached, with the Seventh Division, the ditch 
of the outer works of the enemy in the assaull 
on Vicksburg on the 22d of .May. and as other 
commands failed to gel up to the works, took 



the responsibility of ordering his command 
back under cover from the enemy's fire instead 
of ordering them over the works, which 
course received the approval of General Grant 
and General McPheraon. After the surrender 
of Vicksburg he was again appointed brigadier 
general by President Lincoln, while the Sen 
ate was not in session, and he at once entered 
upon the duties of his new rank, and was 
ordered by General Grant to report, fur 
temporary duty only, to General Scofield, com 
manding the Department of the Missouri. He 
was now assigned to the command of a terri- 
torial district, including southwest Missouri 
and northwest Arkansas. This command he 
retained until the Rebel Army surrender. 
This last promotion was made upon the special 
recommendation of General Grant, and when, 
in February. 1864, General Grant had been 
requested by General Halleck to designate the 
colonels that had been promoted to brigadier 
generals that he thought he must have con- 
tinued — as there were a greater number in the 
list than could be confirmed, with due regard 
to the public welfare — General Grant desig- 
nated fourteen, of whom General Sanborn was 
one. that should be confirmed. No one of the 
fourteen ever knew that General (Irani had 
written such a letter till it was printed in the 
Rebellion Records in recent years. In the 
autumn of 1864 General Sanborn conducted 
successfully, first a defensive and then an 
offensive campaign in Missouri, against the 
army of Gen. Sterling Price. He com 
manded all the cavalry in Hie army west 
id' the Mississippi river in the field — between 
eighl and ten thousand mounted nun — against 
more than double that number of Confederates 
under the command of eight general officers, 
several of whom were graduates of West 
Point, or had served in the Mexican War. The 
campaign was so conducted thai the Rebel 
Army was practically broken up, Generals 
Marmaduke and Cabell captured, with more 
than two thousand prisoners, eight pieces of 
artillery and a large amount of supplies. 
After the surrender of the Rebel armies he 
was ordered to take the command of an ex- 
pedition to the southern plains to terminate 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



165 



the disorders, and establish peace with the 
Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Apache, and 
Kiowa Indians. This was speedily accom- 
plished and a treaty of peace concluded with 
all those tribes in October of that year. 
Thereupon he was sent to the Indian Territory 
to adjust the relations between the Five Civil- 
ized Tribes and their former slaves. This 
service was successfully accomplished during 
the winter of 1865-6, and thereupon he was 
mustered out of the military service in June. 
1866. After this he was appointed, in ls<>7, 
by the President, one of the commissioners to 
treat with the hostile bands of Sioux Indians, 
with General Sully, General Buford, Mr. 
Beauvais, Judge Kinney, and Colonel Parker. 
This commission was followed by another 
created by an act of Congress, in which Gen- 
eral Sanborn was named as one of the 
commissioners in the act. The commission 
was composed of Generals Sherman, Harney, 
and Terry, Senator John B. Henderson, the 
commissioner of Indian Affairs, Taylor, and 
Samuel F. Tappan. This commission revised 
and changed the whole system of dealing with 
the Indians, and to a greater extent than ever 
before applied the bounty of the government 
to the feeding, clothing and education of the 
Indians and qualifying them to live the life 
of civilized people. General Sanborn has re 
ceived honors at the hands of his fellow- 
citizens, and been elected to the Minnesota 
Legislature for eight years since leaving the 
United States service, lie was a member at 
the session when the second State Capitol was 
provided for, also when the new Capitol was 
provided for and the State Railroad bonds 
paid. He has been elected for two years com 
mander of the Loyal Legion of Minnesota, and 
was honored with the election of first com- 
mander of the (i. A. R. of this State. His 
prominence in business, in letters and social 
life is evidenced by his presidency of the St. 
Paul Chamber of Commerce for a number of 
years, vice presidency of the National German 
Bank, a trusteeship of the State Historical 
Society, and connection with several literary 
and social clubs. General Sanborn is a gen- 
tleman of means and culture, with a pleasant 



home and troops of steadfast friends. He was 
married in March, 1857, to Miss Catharine 
Hall, of Newton, New Jersey, who died in 1860. 
In November, 1865, he married Miss Anna 
Nixon, of Bridgeton, New Jersey — a sister to 
Hon. John T. Nixon, U. S. District Judge for 
that State— who died June, 1878. April 15, 
1880, he was married to Miss Rachel Rice, 
daughter of Hon. Edmund Rice, of St. Paul, 
who is the mother of his four children: Lucy 
Sargent, John Benjamin, Rachel Rice, and 
Frederick. 



RICHARD CHUTE. 



Richard Chute, deceased, a pioneer and one 
of the most active and prominent of the early 
business men of Minneapolis, was born at Cin- 
cinnati, September 23, 1820. His father was 
Rev. James Chute, a descendant of Alexander 
< !hute, who lived in Taunton, England, as early 
as 1268. The family is of Norman origin, and 
in England would claim rank with those who 
came in with William the Conqueror. Mem- 
bers of the family emigrated to America in 
Colonial times, and were prominent figures in 
the early history of New England. Rev. 
James Chute was a native of Byfield, Massa- 
chusetts; was educated to the ministry of the 
Presbyterian Church; taught a private school 
in < /incinnati, removed to Columbus, Ohio, and 
afterwards, in 18.31, to Fort Wayne, Indiana, 
where he died when Richard was fifteen years 
of age. His mother, .Martha Hewes, was de- 
scended from Capt. Roger Clapp, who in 1664 
commanded the "Castle," now Fort Indepen- 
dence. Boston Harbor. She died in Fort 
Wayne when Richard was about thirteen years 
of age. Richard was the oldest of a family of 
five children. All of his early education was re- 
ceived from his parents. At the age of twelve 
he entered the store of S. & II. Hanna & Co.. 
and was employed by various firms until 1841, 
when he engaged as clerk with W. G. & (!. \V. 
Ewing, who were large buyers of furs and 
skins, dealing with various Indian tribes. In 
the conduct of this business he was sent bv his 



1 66 



liKlliHAI'HY OF .MINNESOTA. 



employers, in 1844, to establish and build a 
post at Good Road's village, eight miles above 
Fort Snelling, on the Minnesota river. At that 
time he visited the Falls of St. Anthony — Uien 
almost in a state of nature — and was so im- 
pressed with the natural advantages of the 
location that, standing on the bank, he took 
off his hat and exclaimed: "Here is the site 
of a mighty city." The next year lie became 
a partner with the Ewings under the linn 
name of Ewing, Chute & Company, and a few 
years later became interested in the fur busi- 
ness with P. Choteau, Jr., & Company. Though 
a trailer with the Indians, he took a deep inter- 
esi in their welfare and civilization, and aided 
them in several negotiations with the govern- 
ment. He was present at Agency City, Iowa, 
in ISC', a I the making of the treaty with the 
Sacs and Foxes tribe; and in 1S40 was pres- 
ent, at Washington, with the Winnebagoes 
when they sold the "Neutral Ground," in Iowa; 
and in 1851 at Traverse des Sioux and Men- 
dola. when the Sioux concluded the treaties 
which opened Minnesota to settlement. In 
1851 .Mr. Chute took an active part in the pro- 
curing of legislation that resulted in the 
government making treaties by which, in 1855, 
the Ottawas and Chippewas of Michigan ex- 
changed their tribal lands west of the Missis- 
sippi for lands in severalty in Michigan, 
dissolving their tribal relations and becoming 
citizens of that State. The service was not 
official, but altogether voluntary and personal, 
and prompted solely by his interest in the 
welfare of the Indians. Mr. Chute married 
.Miss Mary Eliza Young, at Fort Wayne. In- 
diana. February 28, 1850. She was born at 
Dayton, Ohio, and the only daughter of Rev. 
•lames and Olive (Hubbard) Young, both 
natives of New York. In 1S.~>4 Mr. Chute 
settled permanently in SI. Anthony, and 
engaged in the real estate business. At 
that time the land mi the east side of 
the Mississippi river ai the Falls of St. An- 
thony, controlling the water power, was the 
property of Franklin Steele, of Fort Snelling. 
and other gentlemen. Mr. Chute, in connection 
with Mr. John S. Prince, of St. Paul, purchased 
of .Mr. Steele a one eighth interest in the prop 



erty. In 1856 the St. Anthony Falls Water 
Power Company was incorporated, and the 
property vested in it, and Mr. Chute became 
the agent of the company and manager of the 
property, continuing in that capacity until 
1868, when he became president of the com- 
pany, and continued as such until the sale of 
the property, in 1880, to -las. .1. Hill, of St. 
Paul, and others. Mr. Chute's brother. Dr. S. 
H. Chute, succeeded him as agent and man- 
ager, in 1868, when he became the president 
of the company. These twenty-five years 
were years of activity, of liberal expendi 
ture, with hope long deferred, but finally 
crowned with the success which Mr. 
Chute's prophetic eye had foreseen, and 
his unflagging perseverance and tenacity 
of purpose had conspired to produce. The 
property became the center of an active com- 
munity, and the nucleus and heart of a great 
city. Mr. Chute was the presiding genius and 
engaged actively in whatever seemed of 
promise to benefit the community and build it 
up, mil only in material prosperity, but in 
religious and social life, in education, and in 
attractiveness and beauty as a place of resi- 
dence. In the summer of 1856, with others, he 
expended a large amount of money which had 
been raised by the people, in clearing the 
channel of the Mississippi above Fort Snelling. 
ti> enable steamboats to navigate the river to 
Minneapolis. In November, 1856, he was re- 
quested by Henry M. Rice, I hen Territorial 
delegate to Congress, to go to Washington and 
aid in securing the passage of a railroad land 
grant bill, and after a long legislative contest, 
on the last day of the session, the bill was 
passed, which resulted in the building of 1,400 
miles of railroad in the State of .Minnesota. 
.Mr. ('little was made a charter director in sev- 
eral of the railroad companies, and spent much 
time in promoting them, especially the present 
Cleat Northern system, lie also united with 
other enterprising citizens in organizing a 
Union Board of Trade, in which he was for 
many years a director and its first presi- 
dent. In this service he introduced the system 
of boulevarding I he streets, and the system 
of numbering streets and houses, by which 




«w & 



L* — ■, C-, * f(/^s<L^^Ar^n^T-^) 



MIOGHA1MIY OF MINNESOTA. 



167 



their location is so readily comprehended, and 
it was he who, in 1858, purchased 3,300 shade 
trees and had them sot out along the street 
lines, which has added so much to the conil'orl 
and beauty of Minneapolis. Upon the opening 
of the land office in Minneapolis, Mr. Chute, 
in company with Mr. H. (5. O. Morrison, entered 
fifteen hundred acres of land. In lstiii he was 
appointed by Governor Ramsey special quar- 
termaster for troops ordered to Fort Ripley, 
and while there was appointed assistant 
quartermaster of the State, with the rank of 
lieutenant colonel. From 1863 to the close of 
the War of the Rebellion, he was United States 
provosi marshal for Hennepin county. In 1865 
he formed a business partnership with his 
brother. Dr. Samuel II. Chute, which continued 
up to the time of his death. Mr. Chute went 
to Washington in 1868-9, and appealed to Con 
gress for aid in the improvement of navigation 
of the river and in the preservation of the 
Falls of St. Anthony. A bill granting one 
hundred thousand acres of land to aid in I lie 
work was introduced, but failed to pass by one 
vote. The following year he again failed in 
his efforts to pass the bill, but in the spring of 
1870 he succeeded in getting a cash appropria- 
tion of 150.000, and a U. S. engineer was 
appointed to take charge of the work. Subse 
quent appropriations were made by Congress, 
which, with the aid of Municipal subscriptions, 
with those of the water power companies and 
individuals, furnished the means for building 
a substantial concrete dyke under the river 
bed, from bank to bank, which has effectually 
stayed the threatened devastation by the water 
torrent, and made the falls permanent and 
secure. The municipal union of St. Anthony 
and Minneapolis, unpopular with the majority 
of citizens, was so ably advocated by Mr. 
Chute, and a few other leading citizens, that 
the union was effected in 1X72. In 1876 Mr. 
Chute was appointed a regent of the Univer- 
sity, and acted as its treasurer for several 
years, resigning in 1882 in consequence of ill 
health, which made it necessary for him to 
seek a less rigorous climate. Subsequently he 
spent much time in the southern States, and 
became a dose student of the colored race, and 



to problems connected therewith. While 
attending the World's Fair at Chicago, in 
1893, Mr. Chute was taken ill, and after a 
few weeks, died in that city on the first 
day of August, and on the 4th was buried in 
Lakewood cemetery in Minneapolis. Mr. 
Chute had always been an attractive fig- 
ure upon the streets of Minneapolis. A little 
under six feet, of medium build, with fair com- 
plexion, he possessed a native gentleness of 
manner. A heart ever ready to give of its best 
to the world, never willing to judge harshly, 
always looking for the best in his fellow men 
and never so happy as when doing for others. 
His energy of character and his great enthus- 
iasm in whatever he undertook to accomplish 
never failed to bring success, and Minneapolis 
owes much to his enterprise and public spirit. 
He was originally an old-time Whig, and he 
was one of the twenty who, in 1855, organized 
the Republican party in Minnesota. He was a 
member and elder of the Presbyterian church, 
a prominent temperance man in theory and 
practice, and an advocate of female suffrage, 
with educational qualifications for both sexes. 
Mr. and Mrs. Chute were the parents of five 
children, viz: Charles Richard, Minnie Olive 
(deceased), Mary Welcome (deceased), William 
Young, and Grace Fairchild, wife of Major J. 
W. Jacobs of the U. S. Army. Mrs. Chute 
still survives, and the sons, Charles R. and 
William Y.. are both residents of Minneapolis, 
engaged in the real estate business. The 
brother, Dr. S. H. Chute, is also a resident of 
Minneapolis, and a prominent man of affairs. 
A sketch of his life appears in another part of 
this work. 



CAD WALLA DER C. WASHBURN. 

Xo State of equal age and population has 
made a larger contribution to the glory and 
opulence of the Nation than the far-off State 
of Maine. Her gift is in stalwart men of 
superior intellectual endowments, praise 
worthy ambition, moral and physical courage. 
And in the clear light of impartial history the 



1 68 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



family name <>f Washburn is easily the most 
eminent, in the beneficence and duration of 
public service, and the progressive develop- 
ment and judicious conservation of material 
resources. Cadwallader ("olden Washburn 
was the fourth in a family of sgveh brothers, 
born at Livermore, .Maine, and the aggregate 
official public service of five of these brothers 
covers a period of eighty-five years. One be- 
came a major general in the Union army, two 
foreign ministers, two Governors, and four 
members of Congress. The eldest, Israel, rep- 
resented his district in the Slate of Maine for 
ten years in Congress, served his State as 
Governor one term, and filled the office of col- 
lector of the port at Portland for twelve years; 
the fourth, Charles A., served for seven years 
as minister to Paraguay under an appointment 
by President Lincoln; the third. Elihu I?., rep- 
resented an Illinois district in Congress for 
twenty years, was the first Secretary of State 
in Grant's cabinet, and served by appointment 
of Grant eight years as minister to France; 
the youngest brother and the only one living, 
represented the Minneapolis district in Con- 
gress several times, and served one term in the 
United States Senate. Both of the grand- 
fathers, Israel Washburn and Samuel Benja- 
min, were soldiers of the Revolution. C. < '. 
Washburn, with whose deeds this sketch is 
concerned, was born April 22, ISIS. His boy- 
hood was passed at work on his father's farm, 
helping in his father's general store and at- 
tending the district school, in which he 
qualified himself for teaching by the time he 
had reached the age of seventeen. From that 
time until his majority was attained, he was 
employed as teacher at Wicasset, not far from 
his home. The habit of industry was sup- 
ported by the habit of frugality, so that he 
was able to save a pari of the small salary 
earned by a common school teacher sixty years 
ago; and this little accumulation comprised 
his entire financial capital when lie started 
west to make his fortune, on arriving at the 
age of twenty-one. lie first located at Daven- 
port, Iowa, where he taught a private school 
for three months, and then for a year was 
employed by the commission in making a geo- 



logical survey of the State. Having formed 
the resolution to study law, he entered the law 
office of Joseph R. Wells, in Rock Island, Illi 
nois, under whose instruction the text books 
were studied. Incidentally he accepted the 
office of surveyor of Rock Island county, the 
income of which assisted in paying his ex- 
penses while prosecuting his studies. When 
qualified for practice he was admitted to the 
bar and located at Mineral Point, Wisconsin. 
Soon afterwards he formed a partnership with 
Cyrus Woodman, representing the New Eng- 
land Land Company, with abundant capital, 
and the firm of Washburn & Woodman opened 
up and conducted a lucrative business, which 
combined dealing in real estate, entering gov- 
ernment lands, examining and perfecting 
titles, and locating Mexican war land warrants. 
The law and real estate business were very 
profitable, and Mr. Washburn invested his 
accumulations of capital wisely in timber 
lands, which became the foundation of a 
colossal fortune. In 1871 he erected at La 
Crosse mammoth saw-mills, with superb 
modern equipment, and engaged in the manu- 
facture of lumber on a scale theretofore 
unequalled even in Wisconsin. Mr. Wash- 
burn's capacity and fitness for political affairs 
were recognized early, and in 1854 he was 
elected to represent his district in Congress, 
and discharged the duty with such accepta- 
bility as to be re-elected in 1856, and again 
in 1858, serving in the 34th, 35th ami 36tb 
Congresses. After dropping out during the 
war for service in the Union army, lie was 
elected to the 40th and 41st Congresses. It 
is a singular coincidence that among the col- 
leagues of C. C. Washburn in Congress before 
the war were two of his elder brothers — 
Israel, who represented the Penobscot District 
of Maine, and Elihu, who represented the 
Galena District of Illinois. In October, 1861, 
he raised the Second Regiment of Wisconsin 
Cavalry, with which he went to the froni as 
the colonel commanding. Within a year his 
distinguished military service was rewarded 
with a major general's commission. He con 
tinned in the field until the surrender of the 
principal Confederate armies signalized the 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



169 



early termination of the war, and resigned to 
devote Ins undivided energies to his vast com- 
mercial interests, soon to be augmented by 
large industrial and manufacturing enterprises 
in lumbering camps, in rafts and in saw-mills. 
His fellow-citizens manifested their partiality 
by keeping him in the public service with 
comparatively short intermissions. Re-elected 
to Congress in 1866, and again in 1868, he was 
advanced to the Governorship of Wisconsin 
at the close of his fifth Congressional term by 
an election in 1871. His executive ability 
qualified him in an eminent degree for the 
administrative and executive duties of Gov- 
ernor, while his substantial integrity and 
conscientious regard for the obligations of a 
public trust assured the purity of his adminis- 
tration. Governor Washburn had the breadth 
of grasp, the clearness of perception, the calm 
foresight and the strenuous application which 
crowned his large undertakings with abundant 
success. He was a leader in establishing and 
developing the flour milling industry at Minne- 
apolis, and among the first to introduce the 
Hungarian system known as the roller process 
of manufacturing flour, since adopted by all 
the best mills throughout the country. The 
Washburn Mills, destroyed by tire in 1878, 
were rebuilt with a capacity and completeness 
unknown before in the history of the world. 
Mr. Washburn's name is inseparably asso- 
ciated with the fame of Minneapolis, because 
largely through his instrumentality it enjoys 
distinction as the greatest flour-producing 
center of the world. He was a good man, 
eminently practical and useful; hospitable to 
fresh thoughts and new ideas. He was 
generous, tolerant, charitable, public-spirited. 
He gave the Washburn observatory to the 
University at Madison, and the Free Public 
Library to La Crosse. As a memorial to his 
mother, he left in his will $375,000 for the 
erection and endowment of the Washburn 
Orphan's Home in Minneapolis. In recogni- 
tion of modesty and virtue he donated to the 
Catholic Sisters, for educational uses, his 
beautiful home at Edgewood, near Madison. 
His beneficence was conceived in a catholicity 
of spirit, and directed by intelligent sympathy 



and wise foresight, so as to conserve and dis- 
tribute its blessings in the years and centuries 
to follow. 



GEORGE B. YOUNG. 



The life of Judge George Brooks Young may 
be considered as divided into two distinct and 
nearly equal parts, the latter half belonging 
to Minnesota, the former half to the East — to 
Boston. It is not necessary to seek for him 
a noble extraction in foreign lands. Few of 
our countrymen can claim a lineage at once 
more pure and more typically American. His 
parents were both descended from early set- 
tlers in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay 
colonies, and represented families of conse- 
quence in the annals of New England. His 
father, the late Rev. Alexander Young, of 
Boston, was for twenty-eight years the pastor 
of the New South Unitarian church of that 
city, and his paternal grandfather, also Alex- 
ander Young, was senior member of the firm 
of Young & Minns, which for many years pub- 
lished the New England Palladium, a promi- 
nent organ of the Federal party. His mother 
was Caroline James, daughter of Eleazar 
James, Esq., one of the leading lawyers of 
Worcester county, Massachusetts, who resided 
at Barre, but whose native place was the 
picturesque old town of Cohasset. George 
Brooks Young was born at Boston July 25, 
1S40. He attended the common and Latin 
schools of the city, proceeding, in 1856, from 
the latter to Harvard College, where he 
graduated at the end of a four years' course. 
In the fall of 1860 he entered the office of Hon. 
Henry A. Scudder, under whose direction he 
lead law for about a year. 1861 found him 
back at Harvard, in the Law School, from 
which institution he graduated two years later. 
In 1S6J he went to New York City, and was 
for several months engaged in post-graduate 
study in the office of William Curtis Noyes, 
and in December of that year he was admitted 
to the bar. He next held, for a time, the posi- 
tion of managing clerk for David Dudley Field, 
after which he pursued an independent prac- 



170 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



tice during the remainder of his residence in 
the East. Mr. Young was thirty when, in April 
of 1870, he came in search of a new home in 
the Northwest. Locating at Minneapolis, lie 
gained admission to the bar of the Slate, anil 
during the thirty years of his citizenship in 
Minnesota he has been a most earnest and 
efficient member of the profession. In April. 

1574, Mr. Young was appointed Associate Jus- 
tice of the State Supreme Court to till a 
vacancy which occurred through the resigna- 
tion of Chief Justice Ripley and Hie consequent 
promotion of Associate Justice McMillan to 
the higher post. In the ensuing November 
election, however, Hon. F. R. E. Cornell was 
made Associate Justice, so that Judge Young's 
tenure of the office ceased at the beginning of 

1575. In the following May. he left Minne- 
apolis and established himself, both as resident 
and legal practitioner, in St. Paul, which city 
has since been his home and the scene of his 
professional labors. I'pon locating here, he 
associated himself with Stanford Newel, under 
the style of Young & Newel. Subsequently 
this partnership was dissolved, and the firm 
of Young & Lightner formed, which is com- 
posed of three members, viz: George B. 
Young, William II. Lightner and Edward 
Blake Young, and has had a long and 
prosperous career. From his first coming to 
St. Paul, in 1875, until the spring of 1892, Mr. 
Young was reporter of the Supreme Court, 
and twenty-seven volumes of the State reports, 
i. e., volumes 21 to 47 inclusive, were compiled 
by him. For a number of years Judge Young 
has been engaged as a lecturer on the Conflict 
of Laws in the Law School of the State Univer 
sity. A few months after coming to Minne- 
sota, in 1870, Mr. Young returned to Boston, 
and, on September 28th, was married, at 
Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, 
to Miss Ellen Fellows, only daughter of the 
late Daniel Fellows. Esq., of Edgartown, and 
a descendant of Governor Thomas Mayhew, 
who, in Kill, became, not only Governor, but 
patentee and proprietor, as well, of the beau- 
tiful islands of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, 
and the Elizabeth Isles. Mr. and Mis. Young 
have no children. 



THOMAS WILSON. 

Hon. Thomas Wilson, formerly of Winona. 
Minnesota, now of St. Paul, was born in County 
Tyrone, Ireland, May It!, 1S27. He was the 
son of Daniel and Fanny (Cuddy) Wilson, who 
removed to the United States in 1839, and 
settled on a farm in Venango county, Pennsyl- 
vania. Here Thomas spent his time until he 
was twenty, alternately working on the farm 
and attending the common schools of the 
neighborhood. He then entered Alleghany 
College, Pennsylvania, from which institution 
he graduated in 1852. Immediately afterwards 
he took up the study of law with Hon. John 
W. Howe, of Meadville, Pennsylvania, where 
he was admitted to the bar in February, 1855. 
Two months later he removed to the Territory 
of Minnesota, where he opened an office for 
the practice of his profession, at Winona. He 
was a member of the convention that framed 
the Constitution in accordance with which 
Minnesota was, in 1858, admitted to the Union. 
In the fall of 1857 he was elected Judge of 
the District Court of the Third Judicial Dis- 
trict, which office he held for six years. One 
year before his term as District Judge expired, 
he was appointed, by Governor Miller, Asso- 
ciate Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
State; and the subsequent autumn — 1864 — he 
was elected Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court. The latter office he held for four and 
one half years, when he resigned, on July 11, 
1869, to resume the active practice of the law. 
He was a member of the House of Representa- 
tives of the State in 1880-1, and of the State 
Senate in 1883-5. In 1881 he was nominated by 
acclamation as the Democratic candidate for 
the United Stales Senate. He was unanimous 
ly nominated for Congress in 1884, but for 
business reasons declined the nomination. He 
was again unanimously nominated in 1886, and 
though there was a majority of over five 
thousand against his (Democratic) party, in 
die district, he was elected by over 2, Slid ma- 
jority. He was nominated for reelection in 
the fall of isss. when Mr. Cleveland was a 
candidate for the second term, but was de- 
feated by the Republican candidate, the Hon. 





Truz^. 



RIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



171 



Mark H. Dunnell, by a majority of 1,800— the 
Republican majority in the district then being 
between five and six thousand. In 1890 Judge 
Wilson was nominated by the Democratic 
party for GoTernor of Minnesota. The returns 
showed a plurality of 2,267 votes in favor of 
Hon. William R. Merriam, the Republican 
candidate — the normal Republican majority in 
the State being about 10,000. In the autumn 
of 1802, Judge Wilson was appointed general 
counsel for the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis 
& Omaha Railway Company, a position In- 
still occupies. A distinguished member of the 
Supreme Bench says of Judge Wilson: 

"For more than forty years he has been a 
prominent citizen and attorney of Minnesota, 
and during the greater part of that time he has 
stood in the foremost rank of the legal profes- 
sion of the State. The clientage which he has 
commanded has been unsurpassed, perhaps un- 
equaled, both in importance and extent; and 
this statement is in no sense derogatory to the 
achievements of his brother attorneys." 

On December 26th, 18(10, at Winona, Judge 
Wilson was united in marriage to Miss Louise 
Bennett, a native of Rome, New York, daugh- 
ter of Allanson Bennett, Esq., a prominent 
lawyer of that city. Five children were born 
of this marriage, four of whom died in infancy. 
One daughter, Louise, grew to womanhood, 
and was married September 7, 1887, to Lloyd 
W. Bowers, one of the ablest young lawyers of 
Chicago. He was appointed general counsel of 
the Chicago & Northwestern Railway upon 
the death of Hon. William C. Gowdy, in 180::. 



JAMES SHOEMAKER. 

James Shoemaker was born in Northampton 
county — now Monroe county — Pennsylvania. 
June 0, lN2."k He was the son of Jacob and 
Hannah (Trach) Shoemaker, both parents 
being natives of Pennsylvania, and of German 
ancestry. His father, Jacob Shoemaker, was 
an influential citizen, well known in the State 
of Pennsylvania. He conducted a large farm 
and two flouring mills, one in Monroe county, 
New York, and the other in Flatbrookville, 



New Jersey. He was treasurer of the county in 
which he lived for many years, and was a prom 
inent man in public affairs. His forefathers 
were residents of Pennsylvania before the days 
of the Revolution, and some of them were sol 
diers in the war for independence. The subject 
of this sketch was one of a family of seven sons 
and four daughters. He received his early 
education in the common country schools, liv- 
ing and working on his father's farm and in 
the flouring mill until he was twenty-one years 
of age, when he went to Easton, Pennsylvania, 
and found employment as clerk in a general 
store, where he remained four years. He was 
then connected with a foundry business and 
the manufacture of stoves, for about one year, 
after which, with a partner, he started a drv- 
'A Is store in Easton, Pennsylvania, and re- 
mained in that business up to 1856. In 1857 
he came to Minnesota and landed in Mankato 
on the 9th of May. In 1858 he was appointed 
on the board of county commissioners. In 
1859, he opened an auction and commission 
store, which he conducted for only one year. 
He then sold out his business and went to the 
Rocky mountains at the time of the Pikes Peak 
gold excitement, where he spent the summer 
in prospecting and mining — but he did not find 
a fortune. He returned in the fall to Mankato 
and was elected a member of the city board 
of education. He was the first president of 
the board of trustees of the Glenwood Ceme- 
tery Association, and has been one of the board 
of directors ever since. He was one of the 
original members of the board of trade, or- 
ganized in 1869, and has been president of the 
board for the last three years, and also a mem- 
ber of the board of public works. He is 
president of the "Old Settler's Territorial 
Historical Association," which society was 
organized by him. Mr. Shoemaker served as 
city assessor for sixteen years — was appointed 
in 1S78, and retired in 1894. In 1884-5, he 
served as manager of the Mankato Exhibit at 
the New Orleans Cotton Exposition. Mr. 
Shoemaker published a directory of the City 
of Mankato in 1878, and a directory of the city 
and county in 1881 and also in 1888. At the 
time of the Indian outbreak, in 1862, Mr. Shoe- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



maker was appointed commissary sergeant in 
('apt. William Bierbauer's company from .Man 
kato, and participated in the New Ulm fight, 
under Col. Charles E. Flandrau, where his 
horse was killed from under him during the 
engagement. After the evacuation of New 
rim. on the 25th of August, the citizens were 
brought to Mankato, and a hospital was estab- 
lished. On its reorganization, August 31, 1862, 
Mr. Shoemaker was elected second lieutenant 
of a company of thirty days' volunteers under 
State authority, and was for a time stationed 
at South Bend. He was with a part of the 
company that was detailed, under Captain I !ox, 
to build Fort Cox, acting as quartermaster, 
and remained there until they were relieved 
by a company of United States soldiers. 
Lieutenant Shoemaker was present with his 
company, on the 26th of December, lsr.2, when 
thirty-eight of the condemned Indians were 
hung on one gallows, which was erected on 
the present site of the C. & N. W. freight 
depot in Mankato. In politics Mr. Shoemaker 
has been a Democrat, but has never sought 
public office, though he has served for several 
years as county coroner, first by appointment 
and afterwards by election. For over forty 
years Mr. Shoemaker has been conspicuous in 
every public undertaking, laboring unselfishly 
for the purpose of promoting the welfare of his 
town and fellow-citizens. Scarcely an enter- 
prise in the history of Mankato but owes some- 
thing of its success to his earnest, unselfish 
labor. He is a man of sterling integrity, con- 
scientious and kind hearted to a fault. Though 
not gifted with too much of this world's goods 
— and such men seldom are — no one in mis- 
fortune appeals to him in vain. James Shoe- 
maker's name is unsullied, his integrity 
unquestioned, and no man can point to a mean 
or unbecoming action in his long and eventful 
career. Mankato may have had men who ac- 
complished greater things for her prosperity, 
but none who worked more sincerely, con- 
scientiously and unselfishly than James SI 

maker. He was married May 30, 1867, to 
Frances V. King, daughter of John A. King, a 
native of New York. Their only child and son, 
Charles J. Shoemaker, died in Duluth, Minne- 



sota, December 1G, 181)0, of typhoid fever, at 
the age of twenty-two years. He was a gradu- 
ate of the University Law School at Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, and studied law witli Mr. J. 
I.. Washburn, in Mankato, and after his 
graduation, in 1890, commenced the practice 
of his profession as a partner with Mr. Wash- 
burn in Duluth. He was a young man of 
superior ability and great promise of future 
success and usefulness, loved and respected 
by all who knew him. 



WALTER H. SANBORN. 

Hon. Walter Henry Sanborn, LL. I)., Judge 
of the United States Circuit Court for the 
Eighth Judicial Circuit and ex-officio Judge 
of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals 
for that circuit, was born on Sanborn's Hill, 
in Epsom, New Hampshire, October 19, 1845. 
The ancestral farm on which he was born has 
been occupied as a homestead by his lineal 
ancestors since 1752, and is now owned by 
Judge Sanborn and his uncle. Gen. John B. 
Sanborn, of St. Paul. It comprises three hun- 
dred acres of land, and upon it stand two huge 
houses, one of which, the Sanborn homestead 
(which has been the summer residence of 
Judge Sanborn for many years), is more than 
a century old and stands upon the Hill, so that 
Mount Washington is visible from its veranda. 
•Indue Sanborn is the eldest sou of Hon. Henry 
F. Sanborn, of Epsom, New Hampshire, and 
Eunice Davis, of Princeton. Massachusetts, 
who were married in 184."!. He is a son of the 
American Revolution. His direct lineal an- 
cestor on the father's side, Eliphalet Sanborn, 
served as a soldier for the Colonies in the 
Revolution, and died from the effect of injuries 
he received in that service. He was elected 
and re-elected town clerk of Epsom in the 
memorable years 177:*., 1775, 177<i and 1777. 
and was one of its selectmen in 1772, 1773 and 
1771. Judge Sanborn's great-grandfather. 
Thomas Davis, served under Prescott at Bun- 
ker Hill, participated in the battle at White 
Plains, was one of the Colonial Army which 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



i/3 



compelled and witnessed the surrender of Bur- 
goyne, continued his service until the close of 
the war, and was one of the soldiers present 
whom Webster addressed as "venerable men" 
at the laying of the corner stone of Bunker 
Hill monument in 1825. Hon. Josiah Sanborn, 
the son of Eliphalet, was elected a member of 
the New Hampshire State Senate for three 
terms, a member of the House of Representa- 
tives of that State for eight terms, and a select- 
man of his native town for twenty years. Hon. 
Henry P. Sanborn, the father of the Judge, 
entered Dartmouth College, but failing health 
compelled him to abandon a professional 
career and he returned to the farm. When 
the State Senate of New Hampshire was 
composed of but twelve members he was 
elected to that body in 1866, and was re-elected 
in 1867. He was elected a member of the 
House of Representatives of that State in 1855 
and a selectman of his native town for six 
years. In his boyhood. Judge Sanborn worked 
on his father's farm in New Hampshire and 
fitted himself for Dartmouth College by attend- 
ing the academies and high schools in his vicin- 
ity. When sixteen years of age he commenced 
to teach school to obtain money to pay for his 
education. He entered Dartmouth College in 
1803, taught school during each winter of his 
college course, was chosen, in 1866, by all the 
students of the college one of two participants 
in the annual college debate, led his class for 
the four years of the course and was graduated 
with the highest honors, as its valedictorian, 
in June, 1867. In February of that year he 
had become the principal of the high school 
at Milford, New Hampshire, and lie held this 
position until February, 1870, when he declined 
a proffered increase of salary, resigned his po- 
sition and went to St. Paul, Minnesota, where 
he was admitted to the bar in the Supreme 
Court of that State in February, 1871. Dart- 
mouth College conferred upon him the degree 
of LL. D. on June 19, 1893. He had before 
received from this college the degrees of A. B. 
and A. M. On the 1st of May, 1871, he formed 
a partnership for the practice of law with < len. 
John B. Sanborn, under the name of John B. 
& W. H. Sanborn, and continued to practice 



as a member of that firm until February 10, 
1892, when he was nominated United States 
< Jircuit Judge by President Harrison. He was 
one of the attorneys in more than forty-four 
hundred lawsuits and the leading counsel in 
man}- noted cases. In 1881 he was one of the 
counsel for the defense in the famous impeach- 
ment trial of Judge E. St. Julien Cox before 
the Senate of the State of Minnesota. In 
1889 he discovered the fact that the law under 
which the city attorney, Hon. William P. Mur- 
ray, was elected was unconstitutional, caused 
the city council to meet and elect Hon. O. E. 
Holman corporation attorney, and then con- 
ducted through the courts the quo warranto 
proceedings which resulted in triumphantly 
seating Mr. Holman. his client. State vs. Mur- 
ray, 41 Minn. 123. It was he who argued the 
unconstitutionality of the "dressed beef act" 
of the Minnesota Legislature of 18S9, and when 
the first arrest for its violation was made he 
obtained a writ of habeas corpus from the 
United States Circuit Court, and in that court, 
and in the United States Supreme Court, sus- 
tained his position that the law was in 
violation of the commercial clause of the Con- 
stitution and void. In re Barber, 39 Federal Re- 
porter 41; Minnesota vs. Barber, 136 U. S. 313. 
In 1885 he was elected treasurer of the State 
Bar Association of St. Paul, and in 1889 he 
was selected by the attorneys of the city by 
ballot as one of four candidates from whom 
the Governor should select two District Judges 
for the county of Ramsey, but he was not 
chosen by the Governor. In 1890 he was elected 
President of the St. Paul Bar Association. In 
Freemasonry he was respected and honored. 
In 1886, 1887 and 1888 he was elected and re- 
elected Eminent Commander of Damascus 
Commandery No. 1, of St. Paul, the oldest or- 
ganization of Knights Templar in the State, 
and one of the strongest and most famous in 
the country. In 1889 he was elected Grand 
Commander of the Knights Templar of the 
State of Minnesota, and in the great parade 
at Washington at the Triennial Conclave in 
October of that year he was marshal of the 
Eleventh Division, and organized and led the 
Templars of ten States. In the municipal af- 



'74 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



fairs of the city of St. Paul he played no 
unimportant part. In 1878 he was elected a 
member of the city council, and was then its 
youngest member. In 1880 he removed liis 
residence from the ward which he then repre- 
sented to St. Anthony Hill, and in 1885 he was 
again elected a member of the city council 
from that district, which was the wealthiest 
and most influential in the city. From that 
time until his elevation to the bench he re- 
mained a member of the council and only re- 
signed his position to enter upon the discharge 
of his duties as Circuit Judge. During his 
service in the city council he was elected its 
vice-president and was the leading spirit on 
the committees that prepared, recommended 
and finally passed the ordinances under which 
the electric and cable systems of street rail- 
ways in that city were introduced and arc now 
operated. When he entered the council there 
was not a foot of pavement or cement sidewalk 
in the St. Anthony Hill district, but under his 
energetic supervision a tract of one hundred 
and sixty acres, including Summit avenue, was 
paved, boulevarded and supplied with cement 
sidewalks, until it is said that no city can beast 
of a single residence tract so large that is so 
beautifully, expensively and uniformly im- 
proved. In politics Judge Sanborn is a Repub- 
lican. In 1890 he was president of the Union 
League of St. Paul. In the same year he was 
chosen chairman of the Republican city con- 
vention, and in every political contest for the 
fifteen years preceding his elevation to the 
bench he was active, energetic and influential. 
In 1879 he delivered the 4th of July oration 
in the city of St. Paul, and his services as a 
public speaker have been frequently in de- 
mand. On November 10, 1874, Judge Sanborn 
was married to Miss Emily F. Bruce of Mil 
ford, New Hampshire, and their family con 
sists of two daughters, Nellie Grace and 
Marian Emily, and two sons, Bruce Walter and 
Henry F. Sanborn. The family residence at 
No. 143 Virginia avenue, on St. Anthony Hill, 
stands in spacious grounds, shaded by more 
than twenty old oak trees, and was built by 
Mr. Sanborn in 1879. On February 10. 1802. 
he was nominated by President Harrison 



Judge of the United States Circuit Court for 
the Eighth Judicial Circuit, and en March 17. 
following his appointment, was confirmed by 
the unanimous vote of the Senate. By virtue 
of this appointment he became one of the three 
members of the United States Circuit Court 
of Appeals for that circuit, the tribunal next 
in rank to the United States Supreme Court. 
The Eighth is the largest judicial circuit in 
the United States, and comprises the St a hs 
of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Da- 
kota, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nebras 
ka, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas, 
and the Court of Appeals takes jurisdic- 
tion over these States and over the Indian 
Territory, Oklahoma and New Mexico. This 
circuit has the largest population of any 
circuit in the United States. The Court of 
Appeals of this circuit has been called upon 
to consider the greatest number of cases, em- 
bracing the most diversified and important lit- 
igation of any of the United States courts of 
the same rank, and in the performance of their 
work the judges who have constituted this 
court have all demonstrated their great ability. 
Judge Sanborn came not unprepared for the 
work. Clearness of perception, generosity of 
labor in research, accuracy in detail and state- 
ment, strength in diction, intuitive sense of 
justice, and knowledge of the law. are qualities 
and characteristics which he possessed in a 
high degree. The combination of these quali- 
ties made him a great lawyer, and with his 
long experience in a large and exacting prac- 
tice at the bar added to these qualifications, 
Judge Sanborn was fully equipped for his task, 
and he entered upon it with a zeal and courage 
which assured the splendid results which have 
followed. Many of Judge Sanborn's opinions 
since he has been upon the bench are of great 
importance, and some of them are original in 
their authority. The first cases argued at the 
May, 1S!I2, term of the Circuit Court of Ap- 
peals for the Eighth Circuit were the Omaha 
Bridge cases, which are reported in 10 U. S. 
App. 98, 2 C. C. A. 174, 51 Fed. 309. These 
cases involved great interests, and presented 
nice distinctions of law, that were pressed 
upon the court by most able and persistent 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



175 



counsel. The Union Pacific Railway Company 
had made contracts with the Chicago, Rock 
Island and Pacific Railway Company and the 
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Com- 
pany by which it leased to each of these com- 
panies for the term of 999 years the joint and 
equal possession and use of its tracks over its 
bridge across the Missouri River, al Omaha. 
Alter these contracts were partially executed 
the Union Pacific Company refused to perform 
and undertook to repudiate them. The Rock 
Island Company and the St. Paul Company 
brought suits and obtained decrees for their 
specific performance. The Union Pacific Com- 
pany appealed from these decrees, and insisted 
that the contracts were ultra vires of the Pa- 
cific Company, that the specific performance 
thereof could not be enforced in equity because 
the acts to be performed under them were so 
numerous and complicated, and because the 
contracts were unfair. The opinion of 
Judge Sanborn was exhaustive, but so clear, 
vigorous and convincing that it challenged 
the attention of the bar and placed him 
at once upon a high plane of superiority, 
from which he has steadily risen as his 
work progressed. It opened with a concise 
statement of the limits of the powers of corpo- 
rations created under legislative grants. It 
then reviewed the decisions of the Supreme 
Court upon the powers of such corporations, 
and carefully analyzed the contracts and dem- 
onstrated that it was not beyond the ordinary 
powers of a railroad corporation to let to an- 
other the use of its lines so long as it was not 
thereby disabled from the full performance of 
its duties to the State and the public. The 
acts of Congress relative to the construction 
and use of railroad bridges over the great riv- 
ers were examined and shown to have fairly 
empowered the Pacific Company to make its 
contracts of lease. Each of the ques- 
tions presented in these cases was treated 
in the most masterly manner. The de- 
crees below were affirmed, and the opinion 
of Judge Sanborn has since been reviewed 
and affirmed by the Supreme Court. In 
Barnes vs. Poirier, 27 U. S. App. 500, 12 
C. C. A. 9, 64 Fed. 14, Judge Sanborn delivered 



an opinion on the assignability of additional 
homesteads, which was quoted with approval 
by the Supreme Court in Webster vs. Luther, 
16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 963-6, and which seems to 
have settled that question. In this opinion 
is shown the disposition of the judge to avoid 
the pitfall of technicalities, and to give to the 
law the breadth of construction necessary to 
the accomplishment of the original intention. 
It would seem that the multitude of cases and 
decisions involving the law of negligence 
would have exhausted all possibilities of nov- 
elty in facts and interest in opinions, but in 
cases where Judge Sanborn has delivered opin- 
ions upon this branch of the law he has, by 
his careful statement of the principles, his 
clear-cut discrimination in their application, 
and his free use of the faculty of common 
sense, created new leading cases. Examples of 
these are: Union Pacific Railway Co. vs. Jarvi, 
10 U. S. App. 439, 53 Fed. 65, involving the 
questions of defective appliances and contribu- 
tory negligence; Bohn Mfg. Co. vs. Erickson. 
12 U. S. App. 200, 55 Fed. 943, which discusses 
with remarkable clearness the question of 
latent danger; Gowen vs. Harley, 12 U. S. 
App. 574, 56 Fed. 97::. which treats of nearly 
every question likely to arise in a case of per- 
sonal injury occurring to an employe in his 
employment; What Cheer Coal Co. vs. John- 
son, 12 U. S. App. 490, 56 Fed. 810, upon the 
question of vice principal, and the distinctions 
to be made by reason of extent or grade of 
authority; City of Minneapolis vs. Lundin, 7 
O c. A. 344, 58 Fed. 525, which is a very strong- 
case on the doctrine of "fellow servant" and 
the application thereof to conditions arising 
from the performance of work by a municipal- 
ity through its official servants; and Chicago, 
St. Paul etc., Ry. Co. vs. Elliott, 12 U. S. App. 
381, in which Judge Sanborn defines "proxi- 
mate cause"' as understood in law, states the 
rules for its discovery and the reason for these 
rules, and illumines the entire subject with 
clearness of statement and wealth of illustra- 
tion. Questions arising upon municipal bonds 
have been much before the court, and Judge 
Sanborn has written many opinions in these 
cases. In National Life Insurance Co. vs. Board 



]-() 



BIO&RAPHY <)F MINNESOTA. 



of Education of the city of Huron, 27 U. S. 
App. 244, his opinion contains the most ex 
haustive review of the authorities upon the 
effect of the usual recitals in such bonds, and 
the most concise and complete statement of 
the established rules for their construction to 
be found in the books. The opinion is, in fact, 
a most thorough and satisfactory treatise on 
the subject, and outside of its purpose as a 
decision in the case will be of the greatest 
value to the bar and investors in municipal 
securities. The leading case under the Slier 
man anti-trust act, as il applies to traffic con- 
tracts and transportation companies, is United 
States vs. Trans-Missouri Association, 19 U. S. 
App. 3G. Certain railway companies entered 
into a contract forming a freight association, 
agreeing to establish and maintain such rates, 
rules and regulations for freight traffic be- 
tween competitive points as a committee of 
their own choosing should deem reasonable, 
but providing that the rates and rules so es- 
tablished should be public and be subject to 
change at any monthly meeting upon notice, 
and that any member might disregard the 
same and even withdraw from the association 
upon notice. It appeared that the effect of the 
operation of the association bad been to di- 
minish rather than to increase rates. In this 
case Judge Sanborn held that the contract was 
in accord with the policy of the Interstate 
Commerce Act as tending to make competition 
open and fair, and was not void, in an opinion 
which contains a most complete citation and 
review of authorities, and is undoubtedly the 
most thorough discussion of the effect of the 
anti-trust act upon association contracts that 
has been delivered by the courts. This decision 
was subsequently reversed by the Supreme 
Court by a vote of five to four, but a majority 
of the judges to whom the question was pre- 
sented in the course of the litigation, from its 
inception to its close, agreed with Judge San- 
born. The character and effect of the decisions 
and conveyances of the land department of the 
United States have probably never been so 
carefully considered, or so clearly stated, as in 
Judge Sanborn's opinion in United States vs. 
Winona & St. Peter Ry. Co., 15 C. C. A. 96. His 



opinion in Minneapolis vs. Reum, 12 U. S. App. 
446-481, has probably awakened more interest 
and created more public comment than has any 
oilier case in the court. The point involved 
was the exclusive right and power of Congress, 
under the Constitution, to fix the rules and 
requirements upon which a foreign subject 
may become a citizen of the United States, or 
of a State. Beyond all this, the great value of 
his practical business knowledge and expe- 
rience has been shown in the management of 
the receiverships of the Union Pacific Railway 
Company and its allied companies in this cir- 
cuit, of which he has had charge and super- 
vision since early in 1894. 



DORILUS MORRISON. 

Dorilus Morrison was born in the town of 
Livermore, Oxford county, Maine, on the 20th 
of December, 1814, and died in Minneapolis 
June 26, 1897. His father, Samuel Morrison, 
was of Scotch lineage and one of the early set- 
tlers of the State of Maine, where he married 
Betsy Benjamin. Dorilus was the second son 
of a family of four brothers and two sisters. 
His first business venture was as a merchant 
in his native State, furnishing supplies to lum- 
bermen at Bangor. This brought him in con- 
tact with men in that line and gave him an 
insight into the needs and methods of that 
business. It was with the purpose of locating 
pine lands for himself and others that Mr. Mor- 
rison visited Minnesota in 1854. He was so 
favorably impressed with the country, espe- 
cially with its advantages for lumbering, that 
he returned to Maine and disposed of his busi- 
ness. He came to St. Anthony to make a per- 
manent location in the spring of 1855, and at 
once engaged in active business, which he con- 
tinued with great success up to the time of his 
death. Mr. Morrison first took a contract to 
supply the mills with logs, and in the following 
winter fitted out and sent into the pineries, on 
Rum river, a crew of men to cut the timber, 
and, in the spring, brought the winter's cut 
into the booms. This business was continued 
for many years. After the completion of the 






*%- 




hM. 



Ave, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



dam of the Minneapolis Mill Company he built 
a sawmill, opened a lumber-yard and engaged 
extensively in the lumber business. He con- 
ducted all the operations, from cutting the 
logs in the woods to the sale of the manufac- 
tured lumber, until the accumulating interests 
induced him to resign the business to his 
sons, George H. and Clinton, who continued 
it under the style of Morrison Brothers. 
Upon the organization of a Union Board of 
Trade, in 1850, to stimulate the business inter- 
ests of St. Anthony and the incipient town 
of Minneapolis, Mr. Morrison was chosen presi- 
dent and was also a director for several years. 
In the several trade organizations which suc- 
ceeded the pioneer board he was an active co- 
operator. In lSG-t Mr. Morrison was chosen to 
represent the District of Hennepin, West, in 
the State Senate, occupying the position during 
that and the following year. His colleague 
from Hennepin East, during both sessions, was 
Hon. John S. Pillsbury, and in the House of 
Representatives, during the latter year, were 
Hon. Cyrus Aldrich and Judge F. B. E. Cor- 
nell. Hennepin county, always ably repre- 
sented in the Legislature, never sent to that 
body a more brilliant representation. Upon 
the incorporation of the city of Minne- 
apolis, in 1867, Mr. Morrison was chosen its 
first mayor. The succeeding year the office 
was held by Mr. H. G. Harrison, but, in lsc.O, 
Mr. Morrison was again elected, and gave to 
the duties of the office the careful attention 
and decisive action which characterized all his 
public life, and made the city government so 
successful in its early years. When the 
building of the Northern Pacific railroad 
was undertaken a construction company 
was formed, consisting of Mr. Morrison 
associated with others, to which company was 
awarded the contract to construct the first 
section of 240 miles of the line, from the St. 
Louis river to Red river. The work was pushed 
with vigor, and the completed road turned 
over to the company in 1872. Again, 
in 1S73, Mr. Morrison was associated with 
other parties to construct the next section 
of 200 miles of road, from Bed river to Hie 
Missouri river. At its completion the financial 



affairs of the company were in such a condition 
that no money could be obtained to pay for the 
work. Mr. Morrison assumed the shares of his 
associates, and cancelled the indebtedness, re- 
ceiving in payment a large tract of the com 
pany's lands in northern Minnesota which was 
covered with pine timber. This land proved a 
source of immense profit, and contributed 
largely to the already ample fortune which his 
industry and sagacity had accumulated. 
Mr. Morrison built the Excelsior flouring 
mill in 1S78, and leased it to Charles A. Pills- 
bury & Company. This mill was totally de- 
stroyed by fire December 4, 1881, but was 
immediately rebuilt and operated by Mr. Morri- 
son. Mr. Morrison associated with him E. V. 
White, and built the Standard flouring mill. 
Mr. White retired from business after a few 
years, and Mr. Morrison operated the Excelsior 
and Standard mills alone until 1889, when the 
firm became the Minneapolis Flour Manufac- 
turing Company, with Mr. Morrison as presi 
dent — having consolidated with Morse & Sam 
mis, operating Hie Standard, Excelsior and St. 
Anthony mills — with a daily capacity of 3,400 
barrels. In 1871 Mr. Morrison was elected for a 
term of two years a member of the board of 
education, and was re-elected in the year 1878, 
for a term of three years, and was chosen presi 
dent of the board. At the organization of the 
board of park commissioners of the city of 
Minneapolis Mr. Morrison was appointed a 
member of that body, and afterwards held the 
office by election. The magnificent park s \ s 
tern of the city, which has done much to make 
it an attractive and healthful place of resi- 
dence, owes much to the labor and counsel 
which Mr. Morrison gave to this board. He 
was also interested in the Athenaeum, the 
predecessor of the present city library, serving 
on its board of managers, and sometimes as its 
president. He greatly aided in building up the 
institution and thus fostering literary taste in 
the community. Among the enterprises with 
which Mr. Morrison was identified during his 
long business career in Minneapolis was the 
Minneapolis Harvester Works. He applied to 
it his careful business methods, supplied the 
needed capital and made it a success. For 



'/8 



TUOGRAPITY OF MINNESOTA. 



many years il was among the largest manu- 
factories of agricultural machinery in the 
country. Mr. Thomas Lowry, who probably 
knew Mr. Morrison as intimately as any of the 
younger business men of Minneapolis, says of 
him : 

"Dorilus Morrison was one of the most gen- 
erous and public spirited citizens Minneapolis 
ever possessed. A man of large means, he was 
always ready with his capital and brains to 
assist and stand behind any public enterprise 
which would in any way tend to benefit the 
city of his home. He was particularly liberal 
and generous in assisting young men to start 
in business, and in aiding them from his own 
persona] resources. Few* charities in Minne- 
apolis escaped Mr. Morrison's notice. His 
friends and the public generally always felt 
that for any charitable institution of merit his 
purse was always open. He was also a great 
benefactor in a quiet way. and tried to conceal, 
rather than advertise, his donations and chari- 
ties. As a business man. Mr. Morrison was 
one of the ablest that ever came to the State 
of Minnesota. His judgment was clear and 
unerring. In times of financial distress his 
unusual financial ability, together with his 
courage, always carried him through, and 
was a source of strength and encourage- 
ment to others. As is w r ell known by the older 
residents of Minneapolis, Mr. Morrison and Col. 
William S. King were the fathers of the park 
system of this city. Mr. Morrison was one of 
the main men in the organization of the Athe- 
neum, and in its support up to the time it was 
absorbed by the Minneapolis Public Library." 

In politics he was Republican, but not a 
partisan. In religion he was attached to the 
Universalist faith. He was twice married, first 
in 1840, in Livermore, to Miss Harriet K. 
Whittemore, who accompanied him to Minne- 
apolis, and was the mother of his three chil- 
dren, Clinton, George H., now deceased, and 
Grace, wife of Dr. H. H. Kimball of Minneap- 
olis. Mrs. Morrison died in 1881, at Vienna, 
Austria, while on a European trip. One who 
knew Mrs. Morrison intimately during her 
whole married life says of her: "She was dig- 
nified and courtly in her manners, yet 
kind-hearted and sympathetic to all. I always 
regarded her as a queen among women — one 
of the loveliest characters I ever knew." He 



married as his second wife Mrs. Abby < '. <'la; 
stone of Massachusetts. 



GEORGE B. SARGENT. 

The late Hon. George Barnard Sargent, of 
Duluth, Minnesota, was a native of Massachu- 
setts, bora at Boston in the year ISIS. He 
was descended from ancestral Sargents in Eng- 
land by many intervening generations. He be- 
gan life in circumstances admitting of few ad- 
vantages, but his elementary schooling was 
sufficient as a basis for the broad, practical 
education later acquired by self-culture. Civil 
engineering was his early-chosen vocation, and 
by close application to his work and the prac- 
tice of careful economy he laid by, while yet 
very young, a considerable amount of money 
to be used as the foundation of future under- 
takings. In 1836 he left Massachusetts for the 
^Yest, and located at Davenport, Iowa, where 
he established himself as a banker. In his 
early voting days Mr. Sargent was a Whig, be- 
coming a Republican on the formation of that 
party. During the administration of Millard 
Fillmore, and after he, Mr. Sargent, had fol- 
lowed the banking business for about sixteen 
years, he received the appointment of Surveyor 
General for the district comprising the States 
of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. In 1S57 
he was elected mayor of the city of Davenport, 
and served for a term of two years. Upon the 
expiration of his official life he resumed finan- 
cial business in the two centers, Davenport and 
Boston. In 1863 he went, with his family, to 
reside in New York City, and was for six years 
engaged in Wall street as a banker and broker. 
In 1869 he returned West, located in Duluth. 
and at once organized the banking house of 
Geo. B. Sargent & Co. This firm acted as 
western agent for Jay Cooke & Co., of New 
York, and other banking houses of prominence 
in the East. About a year after coming to 
Duluth he was appointed financial agent of 
the Northern Pacific Railway Company, and 
in 1S70-71 made a European tour in the inter- 
est of that company, transacting for it various 
important deals. Mr. Sargent was a man of 




^e* -/3A 




BTOGRAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



i/9 



exceptional judgment and foresight, and these 
native qualities became highly developed by 
his business and official experience. Many of 
Dulutli's early improvements received their 
first impulse from him, and were directed 
toward a successful consummation l>y his tire- 
less energy and tact. Reared in the East, he 
was conversant with its advanced institutions 
and methods, and he had many friends there 
whose moral supporl and financial influence he 
could count upon in his Western enterprises. 
He was strong in his own might, with the 
strength of individual will, energy and pur- 
pose, and he was doubly strong in the co-oper- 
ation of such forces as -lay Cooke & Co., Dodge 
& Co. and .7. S. Morgan & Co.. of Wall street. 
Although bound by many ties and associations 
to the East, from the day when he became a 
resident in the Northwest he threw himself 
into its interests with all the enthusiasm of 
the most devoted citizenship. And while he 
acquired a handsome competency for himself, 
he contributed vastly towards the enrichment 
of his community, lie laid out the London 
addition to the city of Duluth, which is now ;i 
beautiful suburban section; he aided the 
growth of the city by attracting to it good 
citizens from all directions; he was instru- 
mental in bringing about the tide of immi- 
gration which set towards it during the years 
1869 to 1ST:', inclusive; he encouraged the erec- 
tion of fine buildings, and progressive enter- 
prise generally, often to the extent of contrib- 
uting from his individual capital. Mr. Sargent 
was manned in the year 1836 to Mary Perin. 
Of the ten children born to them all but two 
are deceased. Those living are; William < '.. 
whose biography, also, is included in this col- 
lection and .Mrs. F. W. Paine, now living in 
Duluth. In tin' home mansion built by Mr. 
Sargenl in Duluth he resided for three years, 
and after his death, which occurred in 1875, 

until 1897 it continued to b 'cupied by his 

family. A quarter of a century has passed 
since the decease of George B. Sargent, but he 
still lives in many a monument to his pro- 
gressive labor, and in the grateful memory of 
his contemporaries. As merely suggestive of 
his earnest endeavor towards the upbuilding 



of the Northwest, and his wonderful foresight 
in comprehending and appreciating its vast 
resources more than forty years ago, we give 
below an extract from a lecture delivered b\ 
him before the Chamber of Commerce at Tie 
niont Temple, Boston, February 24, 1858; 

"Seated at the mouth of the St. Louis river, 
at the southwestern extremity of Lake Supe- 
rior we are as near the tide waters of the 
Atlantic, within tive-and-twenty miles, as we 
are at Chicago; and we are some four hundred 
miles nearer to St. Paul and the immense conn 
try commanded by that city of marvelous in- 
crease. From this point of lake navigation oil 
this continent we have a navigable highwav, 
by the Sault Ste. Marie, the Welland canal and 
the St. Lawrence, that brings our men of trade 
into direct communication with the greal 
marts of Europe. Westward through Minne 
sota, Dakota and Washington Territory must 
stretch, ultimately, an important branch of 
the Northern Pacific railroad that will bring 
the riches of the East to this depot for inter- 
change and transhipment. At this very spot, 
at the mouth of the St. Louis, Europe and Asia 
will meet and shake hands in the genial months 
of summer, while they may continue to meet 
in winter at Panama. At this point must cen- 
ter the trade of twenty American Stales ye1 
unborn, and the British trade of the Bed river 
settlements and of Hudson's bay. The unde- 
veloped wealth of this lake region offers re- 
ward beyond calculation to those who have the 
energy and enterprise to secure it. Two hun- 
dred years ago it was known to the French 
■b'suils and the Indians that the shores of the 
'Great Lake' abounded in copper; but it was 
as late as 1844 that the discoveries were made 
which have since demonstrated the existence 
there of the most extensive and productive 
copper mines in the world, with solid masses 
of pure copper in view of more than a hundred 
tons' weight each. It is the opinion of the 
official explorer of the Government that the 
iron region of Lake Superior will prove ulti- 
mately of equal value with the copper regions; 
and the details of their reports demonstrate 
that the ores are here developed on a scale of 
magnitude, and in a state of purity, almost 
unprecedented. To descend to smaller but not 
unimportant interests: The fisheries are ex 
haustless, and would of themselves provide 
remunerative occupation for thousands. When 
the lumbering business is fully developed it 
will employ large numbers — and miners, lum- 
bermen and fishermen will call for fanners. 
The iron to build the railroads of northern 



i So 



UK »< MiA I'll V OF MINNESOTA. 



Wisconsin and Minnesota must be shipped 
from England and landed at Chicago and Su- 
perior, or, what is more reasonable and prob- 
able, it must be dug out of the mines of Lake 
Superior, and at some point near its south- 
western extremity be manufactured into rails 
to be delivered and laid down as the roads are 
extended westward and southward. And as 
they are extended the farms will be developed, 
and the immense wheat-fields of northern Iowa 
and .Minnesota will, ere long, be taxed to their 
utmost capacity to supply the local demand for 
their productions, required by the diversified 
industrial interests that are to be presently 
d( veloped. and are now developing, in the al- 
most uninhabited and unexplored regions, of 
which we know so little, except that they 
abound in uncounted wealth. As vet we have 
made bur a few surface scratches on a small 
section of the mineral region, from which there 
were shipped in the year 1S5C not less than 
;!,<><>(> tons of copper, valued at two millions of 
dollars. As to climate, no portion of the 
United Slates surpasses the southern shores 
of Lake Superior in healthfulness during the 
summer months. The winter weather is un- 
doubtedly severe; but we have the experience 
of the oldest settlers that it is a dry cold that 
acts like electricity on the human body — 'ex- 
hilarates the blood, and gives just such a zest 
to physical enjoyment, to the appetite and to 
the muscle," as suits the Anglo-Saxon race. It 
is sometimes said that the important commer- 
cial point to which I have alluded is subject to 
two or three drawbacks, which must prevent 
its realizing the sanguine expectations of its 
settlers. The severity of its climate, the want 
of a fertile back country, the dangerous navi- 
gation of Lake Superior and the want of good 
harbors, are objections most frequently urged 
against the future greatness of a city at the 
southwestern extremity of Lake Superior. 1 
might give some weight to these considerations 
if I did not know that they had all been 
raised in regard to Chicago, and disposed of 
by its wonderful history." 



DANIEL W. LAWLER. 

Daniel William Lawler was born at Prairie 
dii Chien, Wisconsin, March 28, 1859. His fam- 
ily is one of the oldest and most prominent in 
the Northwest. His father, the late (Sen. John 
Lawler, was for years a leading citizen of 
southern Wisconsin. He was one of the pro- 



jectors of the enterprise to build one of the 
first bridges across the Mississippi, and was a 
well known public character, a man of honor, 
distinction and usefulness, and the son is 
worthy of the sire. Mr. Lawler was carefully 
trained to be of use in the world. His early 
education was received in private schools and 
completed at Georgetown College. 1). C., from 
which justly celebrated institution he grad- 
uated '"with honors,'" receiving the degree of 
M. A. He then pursued a thorough course of 
study in the Vale College Law School, was 
graduated therefrom, and at its hands has re- 
ceived the degrees of LL. B. and M. L. He 
came to St. Paul in 1SS4 and began the prac- 
tice of his chosen profession. From the first 
he was successful, and soon attained to promi- 
nence and distinction. In 1886 he was ap- 
pointed 1". S. District Attorney, and held the 
position two years, resigning in 1888. In 
March, 1801, he was elected by the common 
council of St. Paul corporation attorney, and 
served one term of two years. Meanwhile he 
had been active in politics as a Democrat, had 
rendered many services to his party, and had 
become very popular in its councils. In 1892 
his party honored him by nominating him as 
its candidate for Governor. He accepted and 
made a most brilliant canvass, his eloquent 
addresses at various points in the State estab- 
lishing his reputation as a public speaker sec- 
ond to none in the Northwest. With the over- 
whelming odds against him, he did not expect 
an (lection, and when he received several 
thousand more votes than did his ticket as i 
whole, he was entirely satisfied. It was during 
his canvass of the State this year that he 
coined tlie expression now so common in po- 
litical parlance: "I am no man's man and 
wear no man's collar." In 1896 he was chosen 
I he member of the National Democratic Com 
mittee from Minnesota, but by reason of his 
opposition to Mr. Bryan and the Chicago plat- 
form refused to qualify for the position. In 
1S9.'! he became chief counsel of the legal de- 
partment of the Chicago Great Western Kail 
way. which position he still holds. Though he 
is no longer a politician in active service, Mr. 
Lawler has not lost his interest in political 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



1S1 



matters, and especially in political campaigns. 
In the Presidential campaign of 1896 he was 
opposed to the platform of the Democrats 
made at Chicago, and was what was termed a 
"gold Democrat," taking a somewhat active 
part in behalf of the Palmer and Buckuer tick- 
et. Of .Mr. Lawler's forensic abilities, one of 
his associates at the bar, a political opponent, 
but a personal friend, says: 

"Daniel W. Lawler is one of the most pol- 
ished and best equipped orators in the ^Yest. 
As a political speaker lie has no peer in his 
party in the State. If any man could persuade 
me to be a Democrat, I think he could. As an 
advocate before a jury he has few equals. He 
is always earnest — and eloquence is but ear- 
nestness given expression — so that he is always 
eloquent, whether addressing a jury of twelve 
men on the subject of a common lawsuit or a 
vast concourse upon the leading public ques- 
tions of the day. Personally he is universally 
popular wherever known. 1 remember thai 
when he was a candidate for Governor he ran 
very largely ahead of his ticket here in St. 
Paul, where he was best known." 

In 1886 Mr. Lawler married Miss Elizabeth 
O'Leary, daughter of the late Hon. John J. 
O'Leary, a prominent citizen and business man 
of St. Paul. To them have been born three 
children, two of whom, named, respectively, 
Samuel Fahnestock and Margaret Elizabeth 
Lawler, are living. A son. named John Daniel 
Lawler, died in infancy. 



CLINTON MORRISON. 

Clinton Morrison, one of the leading busi- 
ness men and bankers of Minneapolis, was 
born at Livermore, Maine, January 21, 1842. 
He is the iddest son of Dorilus Morrison, one 
of th.e early settlers of Minnesota, and the first 
mayor of Minneapolis. The father's biography 
appears in another part of tins book. Though 
a native of New England, Clinton Morrison's 
training and residence from youth have been 
in Minneapolis, he having accompanied his 
parents when they removed hither in IS.").". lie 
attended the public schools of Minneapolis and 
received his business training as assistant to 



his father, with whom he was always closelj 
associated in his extensive commercial opera 
tions. In 1863, with his brother, George 11. 
Morrison, he engaged in merchandising in a 
general store in Minneapolis, principally for 
the outfitting of lumbermen. He naturally 
followed his father's line of investments, which 
were in pine lands, mills and lumber, and soon 
drifted into lumbering. The Morrison Broth- 
ers operated a water-power saw mill at the 
Falls of St. Anthony, opened a lumber yard, 
and carried on a large lumber business until 
the death of George II., which occurred Jan 
nary I'!). 1882. After tin- death of his brother. 
Clinton Morrison gave his attention more ex- 
clusively to assisting his father, who had be- 
come extensively engaged in business con- 
nected with the Northern Pacific Railway, and 
in the Minneapolis Harvester Works. The lat- 
ter business was especially entrusted to Clinton 
Morrison, who was vice president of the corpo- 
ration, and who gave it (lose and constant 
attention and brought il to a condition of great 
prosperity. They manufactured mowers, har- 
vesters and binders, and when the twine 
binder was perfected by Mr. Appleby — who 
was in the employ of the Minneapolis Com 
pany — it was adopted for general use, and the 
new invention proved a great success. Mr. 
Morrison has been for many years a trustee 
of the Farmers & Mechanics' Savings Bank of 
Minneapolis. In 1886 he was made its presi- 
dent, and has continued in that position to the 
present time. This bank has become the larj; 
est one of its kind, not only in Minneapolis', 
but in the entile Northwest, and its phenom- 
enal growth and success are the best evidence 
of the ability of its acting head and manager. 
The building erected and occupied by this in- 
stitution on South Fourth street is perhaps 
the finest and most perfectly equipped count- 
ing-house in the State, and its deposits have 
reached the enormous sum of f7,000,000. One 
of the leading attorneys of Minneapolis who 
has known Mr. Morrison intimately for many 
years says of him : 

"Clinton Morrison is a man of quick percep 
tions and has a wonderful grasp of business 
affairs. His plans are all carefully matured in 



I 82 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



advance, and when he is ready to execute them 
there is no hesitation or delay. He is a very 
positive man and lias a wonderful grasp of 
details. His mind operates quickly, and lie 
does not care for lengthy explanations of any 
business proposition. Mr. Morrison is very 
charitable, lint his giving is always iu a quiet 
and unostentatious way." 

One of the leading bankers of Minneapolis 
says of Mr. Morrison: 

"As a financier of the highest order Mr. Clin- 
ton Morrison stands pre-eminent. Very few 
men of this country have made so few mis- 
takes, and a long life of undeviating success 
attests tins fact. Mr. Morrison's insight into 
a business proposition is phenomenal, and a 
few hours' cogitation brings him to a correct 
conclusion, where ether men of equal expe- 
rience require days to arrive at a decision. Mr. 
Morrison has been either vice president or 
president of the Fanners & Mechanics' Sav- 
ings Bank for twenty-five years, and his able 
guidance and counsel have been largely instru- 
mental in making this what it is — the largest 
moneyed institution in the Northwest." 

Mr. Morrison was married in February, 1873, 
to Miss Julia Washburn, daughter of Nehe- 
miah Washburn, then a resident of Minneap- 
olis, but a native of Boston, Massachusetts. 
Mrs. Morrison died October 11, 1883, leaving a 
daughter, Ethel, and a son, Angus Washburn 
Morrison. Mr. Morrison is a Republican in 
politics without personal ambition for political 
honors or responsibilities. He is a strong sup- 
porter of the Universalist Church, as his father 
was before him. He is a prominent member, 
and vice president of the Minneapolis Club. 



THOMAS LOWRY. 



Thomas Lowry. of Minneapolis, was born on 
a farm in Logan county, Illinois, February '21, 
L843. His father. Samuel R. Lowry, a native 
of Londonderry, Ireland, emigrated to America 
when a young man and located in Pennsyl- 
vania. Here he married Miss Rachael Bullock, 
a native of Harrisburg, who died in early 
womanhood. The lather, by his energy and 
industry, acquired a fair competence, and, in 



Is.! 4, removed to the West, traveling from 
Pittsburg to Springfield, Illinois, on horse- 
back. A man of commanding presence, great 
dignity of character, courtly manners, and act- 
ive in business affairs, he soon became promi- 
nent in his section of the Slate, and was one 
of Abraham Lincoln's early friends and clients. 
Mr. Lowry has in his possession, and prizes 
highly, personal letters written to his father 
by Mr. Lincoln, when he was a plain, country 
lawyer, unknown to fame. In 1849 Samuel R. 
Lowry removed to Schuyler county, Illinois, 
where he at once took front rank among the 
leading men of that part of the State. It was 
in this new home that the boy Thomas began 
his lessons in life, and, like all boys of his 
time, was put to work on his father's farm in 
the summer, attending the village school dur- 
ing the winter months; and. fortunately, his 
educational facilities were exceedingly good 
for that time. In 1863 he entered Lombard 
University at Galesburg, Illinois, but owing to 
ill health was forced to leave that institution 
before graduating. After leaving college he 
entered the law office of John 0. Bagby, at 
Rushville, Illinois, with whom he studied until 
May, 18U7, when he was admitted to practice 
in all the courts of Illinois. Thus equipped 
with a good education and a profession, young 
Lowry turned his face to the new Northwest 
to lit gin for himself the battle of life. While 
seeking a location, in the spring of lstiT, he 
came to Minneapolis, and was so favorably im- 
pressed with the thriving village that he at 
once determined to settle there. lie at once 
began (he practice of law, and continued his 
professional career successfully until about 
1SS4, when the large personal interests he had 
secured in various important enterprises, per- 
taining to the growth and development of both 
the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, forced 
him to abandon his chosen profession. Sue 
cessful as Mr. Lowry had been in the (practice 
of law, he had no sooner accepted the respon- 
sibilities of these new interests than he at once 
developed that wonderful talent in the admin 
istration of business affairs which has since 
contributed ill a most remarkable degree to 
the marvelous growth and prosperity of the 



BTOGEAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



183 



"Twin Cities" of the Northwest. Most conspic- 
uous among the many important interests with 
which Mr. Lowry lias been identified, and has 
largely controlled, are the street railway sys- 
tems of the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. 
Taking control of the street railways of these 
cities iu their early infancy, when the one was 
but barely self-supporting and the other in 
helpless bankruptcy. Mr. Lowry lias carried 
them forward until the short tramway lines, 
operated by "one-horse" power, of a few years 
ago have grown into the most extensive and 
thoroughly equipped electric street car system 
to be found in the world. In addition to his 
street car interests Mr. Lowry has been prom- 
inently identified with the railway enterprises 
of the Northwest, contributing largely to the 
construction of the Minneapolis, St. Paul & 
Sault Ste. Marie Railway, of which he is now 
the president. With many of the local enter- 
prises of the city in which be lives Mr. Lowry 
has been prominently connected, and its gen- 
eral business growth and its commercial and 
manufacturing interests have been greatly pro- 
moted by his public spirited influence and 
helping hand. 

A prominent journalist, statesman and au- 
thor who has known Mr. Lowry intimately for 
many years says of him: 

"Something more than stereotyped phrases 
are needed to describe the altogether excep- 
tional characteristics of Mr. Lowry. The fact 
is, he is sui generis — a remarkable man in 
many ways. Among the thousands of his ac- 
quaintances all over the country there are 
none who do not regard him as a prodigy of 
endurance as well as of pluck and persever- 
ance. Tt is a general remark that the strain 
which lie has often undergone with seeming 
case would kill most men. Yet to all outward 
appearance he remains unvexed and unwear- 
ied. Let the skies be cloudy or bright, it is 
all the same. The anxieties of business do not 
rol> him for a moment of that smile and hearty 
handshake with which he greets all. 

Capital is not sentimental, but Mr. Lowry 
has succeeded in enlisting it more than once 
through the friendship entertained for him by 
hard headed business men whose admiration 
conquered their prejudices and made him suc- 
cessful where most others would have failed. 
And the pleasant thing about it is that these 



impulses of friendship proved financial wis- 
dom, for investments thus made were never 
misplaced. 

Mr. Lowry has an aptitude for story-telling 
to illustrate a point scarcely inferior to that 
of Abraham Lincoln, and many is the victory 
he has won at the bar, before legislative com- 
mittees, and with boards of aldermen by the 
happy application of a story which clinched 
an argument better than an hour of eloquent 
oratory. 

Mr. Lowry's capacity for work is wonderful. 
One would naturally look for scores of clerks, 
messengers and agents about his office and ex- 
iled to encounter delay in securing an au- 
dience; Imt instead of this a couple of quiet, 
capable men, as unassuming as himself, are 
found in the outer rooms, and it is very rarely 
that a caller is kept waiting beyond a few 
minutes. Yet ask for a document relating to 
business in which you are concerned, and 
which yon may think he, as well as you has 
well-nigh forgotten, and in almost less time 
than it takes to write it the paper is forth- 
coming, and the facts are recalled by him with 
a particularity that astonishes you. 

If asked to name the most popular man in 
his home city, there would be one voice in se- 
lecting Mr. Lowry. And this popularity 
extends far beyond business circles or personal 
acquaintances. Thousands who have never 
met him are familiar with his jokes, his gener- 
osity, his benevolence, and take pride in his 
name and success. 

If he had turned his attention to politics he 
could have commanded almost any position in 
the gift of the people. He is abundantly 
equipped for public service, for his head is a 
store-house of facts, and few men are better 
posted on the political events of the last thirty 
years. 

While familiar with humble life and the hard 
digs of fortune, his home is one of elegance, 
where hospitality is dispensed with a lavish 
hand, and where the refinement and culture 
displayed has often astonished the cosmopolite 
wlio looked only for rude prodigality in the 
homes of Western millionaires. 

Charles Lamb used to say that the most en- 
joyable thing in life was to do good by stealth 
and be found out by accident. If this is true. 
Mr. Lowry has been exceedingly fortunate, for 
many of his benefactions have found him out 
in spite of his efforts at concealment. But 
hundreds of his kind acts are known as yet 
only to the recipients, and will never come to 
light except through accident or the betrayal 
of grateful hearts. 

I have sometimes regarded Mr. Lowrv as 



1 84 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



one of the strongest links between labor and 
capital to be found in the West, if not in the 
whole country. No person of all the thousands 
in his employ could meet him and not feel thai 
he intended to be fair 'between man and man.' 
There is such a positive absence of assump- 
tion, such a plain, straightforward way of put- 
ting things, such an evidence in all his man- 
agement of keeping the 'live and let live' motto 
to the front, that few could withstand and 
none could doubt his sincerity. With probably 
as large an acquaintance all over the land as 
any man in the United States, Mr. Lowry has 
more friends and fewer enemies than any one 
it has ever been my fortune to meet." 

Mr. Lowry has always been a Republican, 
but was never a candidate for any office. In 
1870 he was married to Beatrice M., daugh- 
ter of Dr. C. G. Goodrich of Minneapolis. 
To them have been born two daughters and 
one son, Mary, the wife of H. P. Robinson of 
"The Railway Age," Chicago; Nellie, wife of 
Percy Hageman of Colorado Springs, Colorado, 
and Horace Lowry, a student at the State Uni- 
versity. 



HORACE R, BIGELOW. 

Horace Ransom Bigelow was born in Water- 
vliet, Albany county, New York. March 13, 
1820, and died in St. Paul, Minnesota. Novem 
ber 14, 1804. He was the son of Erastus and 
Statira Ransom Bigelow, who came from Con- 
necticut and settled in Troy, New York, when 
Horace was an infant; a few years later they 
removed to Oneida county, where the son re- 
ceived his literary education, mainly at the 
public schools of Sangerfield and the gymna- 
sium at Utica, in that county. His grandfather, 
Otis Bigelow, was a patriot soldier in the Rev- 
olutionary War, and a member of the agricul- 
tural class. His father, Erastus Bigelow, was 
also a farmer, and Horace, during his youth 
and early manhood, aided his father in the 
farm work during the summer months, at- 
tended school, and later taught school during 
the winter season. After reaching his twenty 
first year he decided to follow a professional 
career, and with this object in view he com- 



menced the study of law. He read with Charles 
A. Mann and with John H. Edmonds of Utica, 
and was admitted to the bar in that city in 
1847. He then opened an office, together with 
Edward S. Brayton, for the practice of his pro- 
fession in Utica, and from the first they were 
successful. Mr. Bigelow was for a time clerk 
of the Recorder's Court and other courts in 
Oneida county. In the autumn of 185:! he de- 
cided to seek a new location, and in company 
with Charles E. Flandrau, came to Minnesota. 
They landed at St. Paul, November 2, of that 
year, and immediately launched the firm of 
Bigelow & Flandrau, attorneys at law. St. 
Paul was at that time a village of about 2,500 
inhabitants, and the opportunities for law 
practice were quite limited, and he found it 
necessary to look for other employment. The 
first winter he taught in the public schools of 
the town, and afterwards acted as agent for 
the sale of "Benton's Thirty Years in the 
United States Senate." Judge Flandrau went 
to St. Peter after a few months and resided 
there until his election to the first Supreme 
Court bench of the State, in 1858. Mr. Bigelow 
resumed the practice of the law in St. Paul 
in partnership with the late John B. Brisbin, 
under the firm name of Brisbin & Bigelow, 
which firm continued for several years, and 
had a large general practice. After its disso- 
lution he was for a time associated with Oliver 
Dalrymple as Bigelow & Dalrymple, whose 
business was largely confined to the prosecu 
tion, before the Department at Washington, 
of Indian claims, growing out of the Sioux 
massacre of 18(52. In 1805 he formed a part- 
nership with Greenleaf Clark, under the firm 
name of Bigelow & Clark. The business of 
this firm increased rapidly, and in 1870 Judge 
Flandrau returned to St. Paul, and the firm of 
Bigelow, Flandrau & Clark was formed, which 
continued in business till 1881, when Mr. Clark 
was appointed to the Supreme Bench. Upon 
the retirement of Mr. Clark, George C. Squires 
was admitted to the firm, the firm name being 
Bigelow, Flandrau & Squires, which partner- 
ship continued until 1887, when Mr. Bigelow 
retired from the active practice of the law. 
Mr. Bigelow was known as an able and skill- 




The Onlury PubUShvig & Cnymvmj Co Chdcapor 




/> 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



185 



fu! lawyer. He gave the closest attention to 
his profession, and rose step by step until he 
had but few peers, and no superiors, as an 
attorney in the State of Minnesota. He had 
an intuitive grasp of legal questions, and con- 
ducted a general practice, embracing all the 
branches of the profession, save criminal law. 
Although a clever and forcible reasoner and an 
easy speaker, he had no taste for advocacy of 
cases before a jury, always preferring the 
presentation of the legal aspect of a litigation 
to a court. Before the courts of last resort his 
practice was very extensive and successful, 
never failing to engage the attention and com- 
mand the respect of those courts to a remark- 
able degree. For twenty-seven years he gave 
his individual attention very largely to rail- 
road and corporation law, during which period 
he was the leading counsel of some of the most 
influential corporations in the Northwest. No 
man stood higher in the legal profession of 
Minnesota than Horace R. Bigelow, and the 
bar attested their appreciation by electing him 
president of the Bar Association during his 
more active career. He was entrusted with 
the most important litigation which came be- 
fore the courts while in active practice, and the 
clearness with which he grasped abstruse legal 
questions, and the vast fund of information 
acquired by his studious life, made him a most 
formidable competitor at the bar. Loved and 
respected by all who knew him. he lived a pure 
and honorable life, an example for generations 
to come. Politically Mr. Bigelow was an old 
line Whig, joining the Republican party when 
it was first established. He was never active 
in politics and never sought office, though he 
was candidate for Chief Justice of the State in 
1857, the nomination coming to him unsought. 
He was defeated by Judge Emmet. Mr. Bige- 
low was married in June, 1862, to Cornelia 
SluiTill, of New Hartford, Oneida county. 
New York. They were the parents of five 
children, three sons and two daughters. The 
third son, George, died in early youth. The 
first son, Lewis, is now a resident of New York. 
employed on the local staff of the New York 
Journal. Horace, the second son, is an able 
lawyer, in the practice of his profession in 



St. Paul, and now county attorney of Ramsey 
county. The daughters are Alice (Mrs. Ethan 
Allen of New York City), and Cornelia, the 
youngest, now living with her mother in St. 
Paul. 



THOMAS SIMPSON. 



Hon. Thomas Simpson, a prominent member 
of the bar of Winona, Minnesota, was born in 
the north of England, May .SI, 1836, the son 
of Anthony and Elizabeth (Bonson) Simpson. 
He is descended from Scotch ancestry, though 
his father and father's father were both born 
on English soil. His maternal grandfather, 
Robert Bonson, was a doctor by profession; 
bin both grandfathers were interested in min- 
ing, Nathan Simpson in the mother country, 
while Robert Bonson, who visited America in 
1825 and remained here for several years, did 
some pioneering in our mining industry, found- 
ing the first lead furnace at Galena, Illinois, 
and also the first at Dubuque, Iowa. Anthony 
Simpson — son of Nathan — as a young man 
superintended an English lead mine in Swale- 
dale, Yorkshire. About 1837, and while the 
subject of this sketch was an infant, he brought 
his family to America and settled in Dubuque, 
Iowa. There he became engaged in the mining 
and smelting business, at the same time con- 
ducting the farm upon which he lived, and 
where he died in 1866, his wife surviving him 
until 1871. While in England, Anthony and 
Elizabeth Simpson had been members of the 
Wesleyan church. In America they identified 
themselves with the Methodist Episcopal 
church, in the official activities of which An- 
thony long tool; a leading part. He was much 
respected as an upright and responsible citi- 
zen, and was early drawn into prominence in 
secular as well as religious affairs. His son 
Thomas, to whose life and achievements this 
sketch will now confine itself, was one of ten 
children, six of whom are still living. Thomas 
grew u]> in Dubuque, attending school and 
assisting, as his age and strength permitted, 
in flu- farm work and the mining and smelting. 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



His public school education was but a founda- 
tion for the diversified practical knowledge 
later acquired by his studious mind. He in 
dulged an early bent for both civil engineering 
and legal study, and in the former look a 
course of training from the Rev, E. S. Nonas, 
a clergyman of distinction, who had at a 
former period been State Surveyor of Maine. 
Mis studies were completed in 185:!, and in 
the following year, Mr. Norris having received 
from the United States Surveyor General at 
Dubuque the contract for running the guide 
meridians and standard parallels — the basal 
lines for government survey of Minnesota 
Territory — he engaged young Simpson to ac- 
company him as one of his corps of assistants. 
Soon discovering that his ex-pupil, though but 
seventeen, was competent to take charge of 
the work, he turned it over to our subject, who 
carried it on to its completion in 1855. This 
work is on record in the office of the United 
States Surveyor General at St. Paul. In this 
connection it may be stated that in December, 
1899, Mr. Simpson read before the Minnesota 
Historical Society, at St. Paul, a paper pre- 
pared by him on "The History of the Early 
Government Land Survey in Minnesota West 
of I lie Mississippi River." The reading was 
listened to with intense interest, and the 
paper, which was recognized as a most valu- 
able contribution of data to the early history 
of the State, will be published by the His 
torical Society. Shortly alter completing his 
surveying task, in 1855, Mr. Simpson was 
commissioned by the government to go to 
Green Bay, Wisconsin, to determine the boun- 
daries of the Menominee Indian reservation. 
with a view to protecting the Red Men in their 
timber and lumber rights. Since the beginning 
of 1856 Mr. Simpson has been a resident of 
Winona. For the first few years after locating 
here he was engaged in real estate and loan 
operations; but his previously acquired knowl- 
edge of law had not been forgotten, nor his 
legal ambition abandoned. In 1858 he was 
admitted to the bar of Minnesota, and has 
since been in active and successful practice. 
During this time he has been a member in 
two law partnerships; the first with Judge 



Aimer Lewis, which was dissolved in 18(14, and 
the second with George 1'. Wilson, who was 
subsequently elected Attorney General of the 
State. Mr. Simpson's political tenets are Re- 
publican, and he has been made the incumbent 
of various public offices. Shortly after coming 
of age he was elected justice of the peace in 
the city of Winona. After his two-years' term 
of service, he was made secretary of the con- 
solidated school districts of the city. He has 
served three terms as alderman, and was the 
first presiden! of I he city board of education. 
In L864 he was appointed on the Normal 
School Board of Minnesota, and retained his 
membership for twenty years, serving during 
a large portion of that period as president of 
the board. In 1866 he was elected to the State 
Senate, and his record as a member of the 
General Assembly is an honorable one. 
Throughout his mature life he has been a com- 
municant of the Methodist Episcopal church. 
Hi' was superintendent of the Sunday school 
of the Central Methodist church of Winona 
from 1856 to L892, and has rendered a variety 
of important official services to the church. 
Mr. Simpson was married October 30, I860, to 
Isabella Margaret Ilolstein, a Pennsylvania 
lady. Three sons were the fruit of their union 
— George T., .lames K. and Earl. Mrs. Simp- 
son died December 21, 1888. The development 
of Mr. Simpson's career has been intimately 
associated with that of his city and his State. 
When he settled in Minnesota its population 
was sparse, probably less than six thousand, 
and, taking at once the attitude of a wide- 
awake citizen, with the good of his community 
at heart, he came rapidly into touch with 
varied phases of its industry and progress. He 
has been prominent in promoting the manu- 
facturing interests of Winona; was among the 
organizers of the Second National Bank, and 
for many years served as ils president; con- 
tributed strongly to the forces which estab 
lished the Winona & Western Railroad, and 
is now secretary and general counsel for the 
company. He has controlled extensive landed 
interests in the State, and is counted among 
the substantial and leading men of southern 
.Minnesota. 








Gv^t. 



c^y^gu^j 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



187 



CHARLES E. FLANDRAU. 

Among the ablest jurists and foremost citi- 
zens of St. Paul is Charles Eugene Flandrau, 
a resident of the Territory and State of Minne- 
sota for nearly half a century. He was born 
in the city of New York, July 15, 1828. The 
name suggests his French origin, and, indeed, 
the nativity of his paternal ancestors was 
France. They were Huguenots, conscientious 
in their religious convictions, and tenacious as 
John Calvin in their adherence to the faith. 
They emigrated from La Rochelle, in France, 
and settled in Westchester county, New York, 
where they founded the town of New Rochelle. 
His father, Thomas H. Flandrau, was born in 
this town, but removed early to the city of 
Utica, where he entered the profession of law. 
He subsequently removed to New York City, 
and for some time was associated in partner- 
ship with that able lawyer, eminent scholar, 
conspicuous politician and adventurer, Aarou 
Burr. His mother was Elizabeth Macomb, the 
half-sister of Gen. Alexander Macomb, who 
was commander-in-chief of the army of the 
United States from 1828 to 1841. In early 
boyhood Charles E. Flandrau attended school 
at Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, 
and while so occupied, at the age of thirteen, 
sought to enter the U. S. Navy as midshipman. 
Failing, on account of youth, served only to 
stimulate his desire and fix his determination 
to become a sailor. Accordingly he shipped as 
a common seaman on the United States rev- 
enue cutter "Forward," where he served a 
year, and then shipped for another year in the 
"Van Buren." The realities encountered in 
actual service on board a government ship 
were not such as had been foreshadowed in 
his youthful dreams of a sea-faring life, and 
a few voyages on different merchant vessels 
satiated his longing for naval distinction. 
With cheerful content he returned to his books 
at Georgetown, but only for a brief period. 
He was restless, as well as ambitious, and 
wanted to make his energy productive at once. 
The delay incident to preparation at school 
was irksome, and to his youthful mind the 
compensation was doubtful in comparison with 



the immediate earning capacity of his muscle. 
Moved by this utilitarian idea, he returned to 
New York, and followed the trade of sawing 
mahogany veneers for a period of three years. 
By this time young Flandrau had arrived at 
the age which qualified him to exercise dis 
cretion wisely. His mind reverted to his 
father and his father's profession. On reflec- 
tion, he became convinced that the law alone 
was adapted to his taste, and in that he must 
succeed. With a firm and steadfast resolution 
he entered his father's office in the town of 
Whitesboro, New York, whither the family 
had removed, and began the study of text- 
books as a man who has tried experiments 
and is conscious of doing the right thing. He 
studied earnestly and laboriously under the 
direction and instruction of a teacher inter- 
ested in his proficiency and permanent success, 
rather than his ability to answer questions 
selected for an examination. A conscientious 
father charged with the duty of instructing 
his son in the law, is actuated to a degree both 
by family pride and professional honor. He 
cannot afford to send out an indifferent, half- 
baked lawyer to prey upon the public, dis- 
parage his own family name, and discredit the 
profession in which his own standing is good. 
So he naturally fixes a higher standard of 
proficiency for his son as a student, than 
would be fixed for students in whom he had 
no other than a passing interest, young men 
permitted to have a desk in his office, and to 
use his books as a sort of accommodation. 
Charles E. Flandrau, therefore, applied him- 
self strenuously to study for several years 
before admission to the bar, and when author- 
ized by that formality to practice in the courts 
of New York, formed a partnership with his 
father. This was terminated in two years, 
because of his determination to anticipate the 
advice of Horace Greeley by going West. The 
fame of the new Northwest had reached the 
East, and the Territory of Minnesota was 
already attracting for settlement within its 
borders some of the brightest minds and most 
enterprising men of New England and New 
York. In November, 1853, Charles E. Flan- 
drau and Horace R. Bigelow settled in St. 



1 88 



F.TOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



Paul, and formed a partnership for the prac- 
tice of law. There was not much business for 
a lawyer at the time; the town was small and 
the settlers not inclined to be litigious. Advice 
was cheap, and a young man in the profession 
was obliged either to have what horsemen 
call staying qualities, or capacity for other 
kinds of work, in order to live. Mr. Flandrau 
was fortunately favored with both, and, be- 
sides, had a desire to obtain by personal 
observation a knowledge of the resources of 
the territory in which he had established his 
home. He traveled extensively, and at length 
settled in the village of Traverse des Sioux, in 
the beautiful valley of the Minnesota river. 
On the frontier, in an agricultural communily, 
there is one class of inhabitants. They are all 
"settlers," as different from the mixed and 
changing population of a mining community 
where speculation rules, as the sturdy Missis- 
sippi is different from the restless, rushing 
mountain brook. They fraternize and help 
one another. The lawyer is the leader, de- 
pended upon to direct affairs and to hold the 
offices. Mr. Flandrau became identified with 
the community quickly and thoroughly. He 
was chosen a member of the Constitutional 
Convention of 1857, under which the State 
Government was organized, and had previous- 
ly been a member of the Territorial Council. 
Politically he was a Democrat, and in favor 
with two administrations at Washington be- 
fore the war. President Pierce appointed him 
Indian agent for the Sioux nation in 1856, and 
the following year President Buchanan ap- 
pointed him Associate Justice of the Supreme 
< !ourt for the Territory. In the former position 
he rendered valuable service in punishing the 
Sioux Indians implicated in the massacres at 
Spirit Lake and Springfield, and in rescuing 
and returning safely to their homes the 
women captives taken at the time of the mas- 
sacres. The latter position was the stepping 
stone to that of Justice of the Supreme Court 
of the State, to which he was elected as a 
Democratic candidate. As a member of the 
first Supreme Court, his labor was arduous 
and exacting, in arranging the details for the 
organization of the judiciary and formulating 



a system of practice in the courts, and con- 
struing the statutes framed under the 
Constitution. For this work Judge Flandrau 
was peculiarly qualified by service in the Con- 
stitutional Convention. He had participated in 
the discussions and understood thoroughly the 
intent of that body in framing and adopting 
each article of the instrument. His interpre- 
tation of the Constitution was practically 
authoritative, and his construction of the laws 
enacted to carry its provisions into effect was 
accepted; his judgment as to the conformity 
of the statutes to the fundamental law was 
tin- judgment of an expert. The judicial 
opinions written by him are expressed in clear, 
terse and vigorous language. They are free 
alike from ambiguity and pedantry, and so 
plain and simple as to be readily comprehended 
by a layman. They are found in the first nine 
volumes of the Minnesota Reports. Judge 
Flandrau resigned the office of Justice of the 
Supreme Court in 1804, and removed to Carson 
City, Nevada, where he resumed practice as 
a member of the bar. He moved thence to St. 
Louis, Missouri, where he formed a partnership 
with Col. R. H. Musser, of that city, but the 
experiment was so unsatisfactory that the 
partnership was terminated, and he returned 
to Minnesota before sufficient time had elapsed 
to gain a residence in St. Louis. Locating 
first at Minneapolis, he became associated in 
partnership with Judge Isaac Atwater, and 
soon afterwards was elected city attorney, and 
later was chosen president of its first board 
of trade. At length, in 1870, he resumed his 
residence in St. Paul, after an interval of more 
than six years, and settled dowm with serene 
contentment to the practice of the law, first 
as a member of the firm of Pigelow, Flandrau 
& Clark, and after that as senior member of 
Flandrau, Squires & Cutcheon, and now alone. 
An incident, related of the outbreak of the 
Sioux Indians in ISlii', illustrates at once 
Judge Flandrau's courage, intrepidity and 
promptness to act in emergency at a time of 
manifest public peril. While at his home in 
Traverse des Sioux on the morning of the 18th 
of August, 1862, he received information that 
the terrible tribe of Sioux was on the warpath. 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



189 



murdering settlers who could not escape. 
Without other authority than tin* instinct of 
self-preservation and the impulse to save his 
neighbors from massacre by the savages, he 
proceeded to assemble, arm and equip a com- 
pany of volunteers. Before noou of the same 
day he was ou the march to New Ulm, in 
command of a company of one hundred and 
fifteen men. On arriving at the exposed and 
threatened town, he was chosen commander- 
in-chief of all the volunteer forces assembled, 
and his brilliant, successful defense of New 
Ulm, in a desperately contested battle lasting 
forty hours, forms a thrilling chapter in the 
history of Minnesota. He was a hero and a 
patriot, loved, praised and revered by the 
helpless settlers he had rescued from death at 
the hands of the most cruel and blood-thirsty 
foes. The incident is without precedent, in 
the fact that the principal actor was instantly 
transformed, by his own volition, from a calm, 
conservative jurist, to a military leader and 
executive officer. His movement was so 
prompt and effective that he was requested 
by the Governor of the State to remain for 
some time in command of the volunteers, and 
was empowered to enroll additional troops for 
the defence and protection of the southern 
hoi-der of (lie State. Judge Flandrau has been 
frequently honored with nominations by his 
party, which were accepted with loyal sub- 
mission to the party's will, when there was 
no hope of election because of the overwhelm- 
in" Republican majority. Once he was nomin- 
ated for Governor; another time for Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court, and acted as 
chairman of the Democratic State Central 
Committee. While a Democrat of the Jeffer 
sonian school, he places fidelity to principle 
above fealty to party, and refuses to follow 
after strange gods at the behest of a packed 
convention ruled by a spirit of fanaticism. In 
the campaign of 1890 he declined to support 
the platform and presidential ticket of the 
Chicago convention. Entering the canvass as 
president of the Sound Money Club of Saint 
Paul with enthusiasm, he labored earnestly 
on the stump for the defeat of his party, and 
no speeches more able and effective were de- 



livered that year in Minnesota than those 
which he made. His speeches were the more 
entertaining because of his familiar acquaint- 
ance with the people of every locality and his 
accurate knowledge of local history. He had 
a story for every place, by which he won the 
sympathy of his auditors, and was then able 
to hold their attention while he proceeded to 
indoctrinate them. His memory and his 
faculty for appropriate anecdotes are marvel 
ous. Recalling incidents at will and associat- 
ing them accurately with places, tend to invest 
his political oratory with a peculiar charm, 
and lend an additional element of power to 
his advocacy. As a lawyer he is strong in the 
preparation of cases, clear and convincing in 
argument. Judge Flandrau's personal popu- 
larity, springing naturally from his human 
sympathy, his kindness of heart and genial 
manner, is evidenced by his wide acquaintance 
throughout the State, and the voluntary ex- 
pressions of citizens who have known him most 
intimately. Always busy, he is never too busy 
to welcome a friend. He never wastes time 
by working without a definite purpose. 
Promptness with him is a principle. What 
he engages to do is done without delay. He is 
a clear thinker and a ready writer. Whatever 
he writes is first carefully considered and then 
tersely expressed. His facts are verified at 
any cost of time or trouble, and hence their 
statement in the form of history is valuable. 
History is not written or read for the amuse- 
ment of a passing hour, but for information 
land instruction. Its value depends upon its 
accuracy, which is by no means inconsistent 
with elegant style and rhetorical embellish- 
ment. Judge Flandrau has traveled much, 
having visited nearly all the countries of the 
world. He is strong in his profession, strong 
in his convictions and regard for principle, 
strong in the affectionate esteem of his fellow- 
citizens. He has a large library in his home, 
and reads the best books. His culture is broad 
and varied. He was married August 10, 1S59, 
l«i Miss Isabella R. Dinsmore, of Kentucky, 
who died June 30, 1867, leaving two daugh- 
ters, one of whom subsequently married Tilden 
R. Selmes and the other F. W. M. Cutcheon. 



190 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



February 28, 1871, he was married to Mrs. 
Rebecca B. Riddle, daughter of Judge William 
P.. McClure, of Pittsburg, an eminent jurist, 
whose memory is honored throughout the 
Slate of Pennsylvania. Two sous born of ihis 
marriage are Charles M. Flandrau, and Will- 
iam Blair McC. Flandrau. 



ISAAC ATWATER. 



Judge Isaac Atwater was born at Homer, 
Cortland county, New York, May 3, 1818. 
His father was Ezra Atwater, a farmer, a 
native of Connecticut, of English extraction, 
whose ancestors settled in New Haven about 
the year 174S. His mother was Esther Learn- 
ing, also a native of Connecticut, of English 
descent. Isaac received his early education 
in the common schools, and later prepared for 
college at Cazenovia Seminary and in Homer 
Academy. He entered Yale College in 1S40. 
It was by his own exertions that he secured 
his education, as he never had a dollar except 
what he earned himself by teaching school 
during the time he was preparing for college, 
his father not being able to assist him. After 
his graduation from Yale, in 1844, he went to 
Macon. Georgia, and taught a preparatory 
school, earning money to meet his expenses. 
After one year he returned to New Haven and 
entered the Yale Law School, where he re- 
mained eighteen months. He was admitted 
to the bar of New York City in 1847, and com- 
menced the practice of his profession there 
the following year. His success was from the 
first very flattering, but on account of ill- 
health his physieian advised him to seek a 
change of climate. He was married in 184!) to 
Miss Permelia A. Sanborn, daughter of John 
Sanborn, a business man of Geddes, New 
York. In 1850, he came with his wife to Minne- 
sota and settled in St. Anthony Falls, and for 
one year was associated in the practice of law 
with John W. North. In 1851 he opened an 
office by himself, having meanwhile taken 
the position as editor of the St. Anthony Ex- 
press, which he continued to edit for several 
years, giving it what time was necessary, but 



not to interfere with his legal practice. In 
1851 he was appointed by the Territorial Leg 
islature one of the regents of the University, 
and was secretary of the board until he was 
elected Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court for the new Stale, in 1857, when he 
resigned from the board of regents, lie was 
elected county attorney for Hennepin county 
in 1853, and was appointed by the Governor 
reporter of the decisions of the Territorial 
Supreme Court, lie served on the Supreme 
Bench six years, and, in 1864, resigned on 
account of the meager compensation. He then 
went to Carson City, Nevada, and opened a 
law office in connection with Judge Charles 
E. Flandrau, who had also resigned from the 
Supreme Bench of Minnesota about the same 
time. He located in Carson City in the spring 
of 1804, and remained there until the fall of 
1S00. when he returned to Minneapolis and 
resumed the practice of law in partnership 
with .Judge Flandrau. This partnership was 
dissolved in 1871, after which he continued 
in practice by himself, and in connection with 
others at various times, up to 1880, since which 
he has devoted his time to his private business 
and real estate interests. . lodge Atwater has 
always taken an active and prominent part in 
all local public affairs. He has served his 
city as alderman, and was a member and presi- 
dent of the Hoard of Trade for several years; 
was also a trustee of the Seabury Seminary 
at Faribault, and was for many years a mem- 
ber of the school board and president of the 
board of education. When Judge Atwater 
first settled in St. Anthony, he bought a block 
of land for |800, entirely on credit. He paid 
for this in two years from his legal business. 
The first winter after his arrival, there was 
much excitement about settling on the west 
side of the river, in what was then the Fort 
Snelling reservation. In December, 1850, John 
H. Stevens and Franklin Steele urged him to 
go over and take up a claim. ( >n one stormy 
December day he staked out a claim of about 
one hundred and sixty acres, which included 
the land on which the West Hotel now stands. 
The next spring and summer he put up a 
shanty and spent about flOO in improving the 




The- Century Puilisfiinf & Cnyiminy CO chicaner 



~y*~K^ <, ^yfc^-ciAjJ^Z 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



iyi 



claim. In 1852, he sold this claim, and bought 
another of one hundred and sixty acres below 
where the court house now stands; this he 
held and preempted as soon as the land was 
in market. Here lie laid out Atwater's Addi- 
tion to the city of Minneapolis, most of which 
has since been sold in city lots. lie purchased 
other property, and was one of the largest real 
estate owners in the city, and he still holds 
large interests and property in lots and build 
ings. While attending to his profession and 
other business affairs, he has found much time 
to devote to literary pursuits. He has been 
a frequent contributor to the secular press, to 
the standard magazines of the country, and in 
1802 edited "The History of Minneapolis," a 
valuable contribution to local history. He has 
ever occupied a distinguished position among 
his professional brethren, and his native abil- 
ity and scholarly attainments have commanded 
a prominent place in the community where he 
has lived so many years. Although he has 
passed his four-score years, his mind is still 
clear and vigorous, and he lias, mi doubt, many 
years of usefulness before him. Mrs. Atwater 
is still living in the enjoyment of good physical 
and mental health. They are the parents of 
four children, only one of whom, a son, is now 
living — John B. Atwater — who is one of the 
most prominent and successful lawyers of 
Minneapolis. Mr. Atwater is an active mem- 
ber of the Gethseinane Episcopal church. He 
lias been a prudent contributor to all worthy 
charities, distributing his means judiciously. 
He has been a Mason since 1851, being the 
first apprentice initiated in Cataract Lodge, 
No. 2, of St. Anthony. The above facts con- 
cerning the life of Judge Atwater are prin- 
cipally obtained from his old associate on the 
bench and partner, Judge Flandrau, and the 
only regret his biographer has, is, that space 
limits a full narration of the excellent qualities 
and valuable services of the Judge during his 
long career. 



EDWARD SAWYER. 

The subject of this sketch was born July 
11, 1830, at Dover, Stratford county, New 



Hampshire. He is the son of Thomas E. anil 
Elizabeth (Watson) Sawyer, both of English 
descent and natives of the Granite State. His 
father was a lineal descendant, through eleven 
generations of Quaker stuck, of William Saw 
yer, who, with two brothers — Edward and 
Thomas — came to this country from England 
about 1636, and who located at Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1640, removing later to Newbury, 
in the same State. Thomas E. Sawyer was 
prominent as a member of the bar and in 
politics, having for a number of terms repre- 
sented the city of Dover in the New Hamp- 
shire Legislature, and having once been 
nominated as Whig candidate for the office 
of Governor of the State. He was the father 
of seven children, of whom Edward, our sub- 
ject, was the fourth. Edward Sawyer attended 
the common and high schools of Dover, and 
soon after completing his education entered 
upon the active business career, the events 
of which this sketch will now record. His 
work has lain largely in the field of financial 
business, and he has filled many responsible 
and honorable posts. His initial position was 
that of cashier of the Farmers and Mechanics 
Hank, of Rochester, New Hampshire, which 
he held for two years, beginning with May, 
1858. In June of that year he secured, also, 
the office of assistant clerk in the House of 
Representatives of the State Legislature. In 
1S(>(> lie was advanced from assistant clerk to 
clerk, and served for another two years in the 
higher capacity. In February, 1802, he became 
cashier of the Merrimack County Bank, at Con- 
cord, New Hampshire, and continued as such 
for three years. He then, in February, 1805, 
removed to Dubuque, Iowa, to fill the position 
of cashier of the Northwestern Packet Com 
pany. In October of the following year this 
concern became consolidated with the North- 
western T r nion Packet Company — Davidson's 
line — and this occasioned Mr. Sawyer's re- 
moval to St. Paul, Minnesota, which city has 
since been his home. In 1868 he severed his 
connection with the Consolidated Packet Com- 
pany, and was for the next two years asso- 
ciated as cashier with the banking house of W. 
F. Davidson & Co. For a brief period, in 1871, 



\t)2 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



he served as cashier to the late Jared Benson, 
collector of internal revenue for the St. Paul 
District. Afterwards, by appointment, he be- 
came secretary of the land department. St. 
Paul & Sioux City Railway Company. In this 
position he remained until August, 1878, when 
he received the appointment from the United 
States Circuit Court as receiver in the case of 
Northern Pacific Railway Company vs. St. 
Paul & Pacific Railway Company, a large area 
of land being involved in litigation. In this 
capacity he served until 1894, when the suit 
was finally adjusted. In the meantime— 1879 
— Mr. Sawyer had been elected secretary and 
treasurer of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Mani- 
toba Railway Company; and ten years later, 
upon the organization of the Great Northern 
Railway, he was elected treasurer and assist- 
ant secretary of that company, which is his 
present dual office. Mr. Sawyer has held many 
positions of trust, and it is a fact indicative of 
his character that each change he has made 
has been a voluntary one, made for advance- 
ment or other wise reasons, and that in each 
post relinquished he has left regretful friends. 
The following cordial words are quoted from 
an old-time acquaintance of Mr. Sawyer, who 
is one of the leading citizens of St. Paul: 

"I have known Mr. Sawyer ever since he 
came to Minnesota. He is an exceptional man 
in many ways. In all the positions he has 
held, he has' proved to be wonderfully com- 
petent, and has shown unusual fidelity. He is 
a genial and kind-hearted man, and all who 
know him speak well of him. He is a great 
reader of good works, and possesses a fine 
library. His every idea is well considered, and 
his conclusions just and correct. He is in 
every sense an honorable and trustworthy 
man." 

On November 29, 1859, at Rochester, New 
Hampshire, Mr. Sawyer was united in mar- 
riage to Miss Frances Putnam Kelly. Mrs. 
Sawyer is a lady of superior intellect and 
attainments, which, by the delicate health of 
their possessor, have been to a great extent 
excluded from the social realm they would so 
fittingly adorn. In spite of her sufferings and 
privations, however, she has preserved a rare 



sweetness of temper, and has attached to her 
a large circle of sympathetic and admiring 
friends. Three daughters were born to .Mr. 
and Mrs. Sawyer — Ruth Edna, Fannie Ela. 
and Elizabeth — of whom the two former were 
deceased in infancy. Elizabeth grew to 
womanhood and married the late Edward 
Pea ice. of Providence, Rhode Island. 



CHARLES M. START. 



The present Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court of Minnesota. Charles Monroe Start, is 
a native of Vermont, born at Bakersfield, 
Franklin county, October 4, 1839, but has 
passed more than half of his life — or more 
than thirty six years — in Minnesota. He is a 
son of Simpson G. and Mary S. (Barnes) Start, 
and comes of old New England stock. His 
parents were both of English descent, his re- 
mote paternal ancestors emigrating from the 
south of England to America in 1G52. His 
father was a sturdy Green Mountain farmer, 
and the Judge's early life was spent on the 
paternal homestead. When he had come to 
young manhood he passed the summer seasons 
at work on the farm and the winter in teach- 
ing school, to obtain the means for a better 
education. For a time he attended the 
academy at Barre, Vermont. After leaving 
the academy, he studied law in the office and 
under the instruction of Judge William C. 
Wilson, at Bakersfield, and was admitted to 
the bar in 1860. He was engaged in the 
practice of his profession when the War 
of the Rebellion came. In July, 1802, he 
enlisted in the Union army as a member 
of Company I, Tenth Vermont Infantry. 
He was commissioned first lieutenant of 
his company August 11, but on Decem- 
ber 1, following, he resigned on a surgeon's 
certificate of disability. In October, 1863, 
Judge Start located at Rochester, Minnesota, 
where he engaged in the practice of his pro- 
fession, and where he has since permanently 
resided. His established character as one 
learned in the law may be best understood by 
his official record. He was county attorney of 
Olmsted county for eight years. In 1879 he 




^^Pl^>, Jc. c h^U^O 



' 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



t93 



was elected Attorney General of the State, and 
served from January 1, 1880, until March 12, 
1881, when he resigned to accept an appoint- 
ment to the office of Judge of the Third 
Judicial District of the State. To this position 
he was elected without opposition for three 
successive terms, and was still in service, 
when, in 1894, he was nominated on the Re- 
publican ticket and elected Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court. He took his seat January 
5, 1895, and his term expires in 1901. He has, 
therefore, been connected with the judicial 
system of the State as a public official for 
nearly thirty years, and until he has reached 
the highest rank obtainable in that branch of 
our State government. It is a matter of truth 
and notoriety, moreover, that his distinctions 
have come to him without any effort on his 
part to obtain them. A distinguished jurist, 
who has long known Chief Justice Start, says 
of him: 

"The people of the Third Judicial District, 
over whose courts he presided so long, enter- 
tained so high an admiration for his character 
as a man, and for his ability as a jurist, that 
he could doubtless have retained his position 
as District Judge as long as he desired. When 
he came to St. Paul to assume his duties as 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, his high 
reputation as a man and a jurist had long 
preceded him; and while this may be neither 
the time nor place to speak at length of his 
services in his present position, it is sufficient 
to say that he lias in all respects fulfilled the 
expectation of the people and the bar through- 
out the state. Judge Start possesses in a pre- 
eminent degree, the essential characteristics of 
every great lawyer or judge — both moral and 
mental honesty, which enables a man both to 
discover what is just and to do it. Possessed 
of a strong love of justice, he scorns everything 
that savors of fraud or unfairness in dealings 
between man and man. These qualities, con- 
nected with his clear and bright intellect, could 
not fail to render him a good judge." 

Judge Start was married August 10, 1805, 
to Clara A. Wilson, of his native village of 
Bakersfield, Vermont, daughter of his early 
preceptor, William C. Wilson. Judge and Mrs. 
Start have one child, a daughter, named Clara 
L. The Judge is an attendant of the Congre- 
gational church. 



FREDERICK WEYERHAEUSER. 

Among the prominent lumbermen of the 
United States there is probably none more 
widely known than Frederick Weyerhaeuser, 
of St. Paul, Minnesota. As the senior member 
of the firm of Weyerhaeuser & Denkmanu, of 
Rock Island, Illinois, he was well known 
throughout the West, prior to his election, in 
1872, as the president of the Mississippi River 
Logging Company and its associate corpora- 
tion, the Beef Slough .Manufacturing. Booming, 
Log Driving and Transportation Company. 
These companies practically consolidated the 
timber land and logging interests of all the 
largest saw-mills of the Mississippi valley be- 
low Lake Pepin, and handled and controlled 
almost the entire log output of the Chippewa 
river. They furnished an ideal field for the 
exercise of his untiring energy, his keen busi- 
ness insight, his quick grasp of every important 
factor in submitted propositions, his instant 
recognition of profitable opportunities, his un- 
erring judgment and his dispatch of business 
through a marvelous executive ability. The 
companies referred to in their various ramifica- 
tions and offshoots, and the numerous allied 
undertakings, either in corporate capacity or 
as individual ventures of their members, have 
all proceeded under the immediate direction 
of Mr. Weyerhaeuser, and have for the most 
part originated with him. This fact may pos- 
sibly account for the habit into which the 
daily press has fallen, of attributing every 
important movement in lumber circles to a 
"Weyerhaeuser syndicate." Though, of course, 
frequently incorrect in this, the fact indicates, 
as well as can be done, the position occupied 
by Mr. Weyerhaeuser in the lumber world. 
The timber holdings of the various interests 
of which Mr. Weyerhaeuser is the recognize d 
controlling spirit probably exceed rather than 
fall short of 15,000,000,000 feet— a quantity 
which approximates fully one half of the re- 
maining res ources of the white pine forests 
of the Northwest. In addition to his tim- 
ber lands, logging and lower Mississippi 
interests, he is actively interested in eigh- 
teen extensive manufacturing concerns, among 



194 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



which may be mentioned the Chippewa 
Lumber and Boom Company, Chippewa 

Falls: the Shell Lake Lumber Company, 
Shell Lake, Wisconsin; the Pine Tree Lumber 
Company, Little Falls; and Northern Lumber 
Company, Cloquet, Minnesota, and also large 
interests at Pock Island. Recently, in re- 
ferring to the basis of his success, Mr. Weyer- 
haeuser stated that he attributed it to the fact 
that lie had "always thought more of his credii 
I han of his clothes." This stales the I ruth 
partially. Unquestionably habits of industry 
and frugality at the outset, and the constant 
maintenance of an unsullied credit must un 
derlie all permanent success in legitimate 
commercial enterprises, but for the attainment 
of phenomenal success there must be fortuitous 
circumstances and suitable opportunity, cou- 
pled with the ability to foresee the largest 
possibilites. and the ambition, energy, courage 
and determination which are essential to their 
realization. All of these elements find abun- 
dant illustration in Mr. Weyerhaeuser' s career. 
One feature of his operations which should be 
mentioned, is the fact that his associates have 
always mutually and fully shared with him 
in the results attained. His efforts have 
always been for the success of the common 
undertakings, and all the parties in interest 
have had a just proportion of the outcome 
realized. Mr. Weyerhaeuser is in every way a 
typical business man, unpretentious, active, 
easily approached, of few words, and quick to 
decide every question that may arise. He has 
,i store of ready wit and a happy faculty of 
illustration, or in adapting some trite maxim 
or story to the question at issue. Of Mr. 
Weyerhaeuser in his private and home life it is 
a pleasure to speak. His business career has 
not been more marked by uprightness, 
integrity and honor than has his private char- 
acter by honesty, sincerity and the character- 
istics of the most worthy manhood. And his 
home has been such as of right belongs to such 
a man. With an utter absence of ostentation, 
it has ever been in the center of the highest 
leiineinent and of the most generous hospital- 
ity. -Mrs. Weyerhaeuser, as the devoted wife 
and mother, has been no less successful in the 



management of the household than lias been 
her worthy husband in the commercial world. 
Their family consists of four sons and 
three daughters, who have each received a lib- 
eral education and are most worthy representa- 
tives of this model American borne. The sons 
have each assumed positions of responsibility 
in lumber organizations, and their marked 
ability effectually disproves the popular notion 
which limits rich men's sons to mediocrity and 
destines them to indifferent success. Chrono- 
logically. Mr. Weyeihaeuser's career may be 
set out as follows: He was born in Nieder- 
saulheim. near Mainz, in southern Germany. 
November 21, 1834; received a common school 
education until he was thirteen years of age; 
worked on his father's farm until lie was 
seventeen; emigrated to America and landed 
in New York July 1, 1852; settled in North 
East, Erie county, Pennsylvania, and came 
west in 1856. He commenced the lumber and 
grain business in Coal Valley, Pock Island 
county. Illinois, and, in 1800, he and Mr. F. C. 
A. Denkmann bought what was known as th" 
Pock Island Saw-Mill, aud organized the part- 
nership, which has ever since been known as 
Weyerhaeuser & Denkmann. In the latter part 
of the sixties they bought what was then, and 
is still, known as the Upper Mill, in Pock 
Island, and in the seventies they consolidated 
that mill with that of Mr. J. S. Keator, and 
organized the Pock Island Lumber & Manu- 
facturing Company. Shortly afterwards they 
bought out the interest of Mr. Keator, and 
have since continued the operations of said 
company. Mr. Weyerhaeuser was married to 
Miss Elizabeth P.ladel, October 11, 1857. In 
April, 1891, he became a resident of St. Paul, 
where he and his family now reside. 



SAMUEL H. CHUTE. 



Dr. Chute was born at Columbus, Ohio, De- 
cember C, 1830. His father was Rev. James 
Chute, and bis ancestry is sketched elsewhere 
in the biography of his brother, the late Rich- 
aril Chute, the eminent citizen whose career 
was so prominently identified with the early 
history of Minnesota aud the Northwest. The 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



195 



Doctor received his scholastic education in 
the common schools of Indiana and at Wa- 
bash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. After 
leaving college he, for four years, engaged in 
the study of medicine under the tutelage of Dr. 
C. E. Sturgis, a noted physician and surgeon 
of Fort Wayne, and as a student in the Ohio 
Medical College at Cincinnati. From the lat- 
ter institution he was graduated in February, 
1852. In March following his graduation Dr. 
Chute set out on an overland trip 1 for the 
distant Territory of Oregon. After a long and 
toilsome journey of over 2,000 miles, occupying 
seven months and fraught with hardships, in- 
teresting incidents and adventures, he arrived 
at the then little village of Portland. Later 
lie went on horseback from Portland to Yreka, 
in northern California, where he was engaged 
in the practice of his profession and in mining 
operations for about four years. He then de- 
termined to leave the Pacific Coast for "t In- 
states, " and after a long sea voyage over the 
Pacific and Atlantic, crossing the Isthmus of 
Panama en route, arrived at New York City. 
Making a short stay in New England, he 
returned to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in March, 
1857, after an absence of five years. Dr. Chute 
has been a resident of Minnesota since the 
spring of 1857. He landed at St. Paul from 
the firs! steamboat of the season on May 1 of 
that year. (In the same day he came to what 
was then called "the Falls" of St. Anthony, 
and two months later purchased of John W. 
North — the founder of the town of Northtield, 
etc.,— for the consideration of f 10,000. the tract 
of land known in the records as "Block 17 of 
the town of St. Anthony Falls." On this tract, 
in a frame dwelling house which is still stand- 
ing, he look up his abode, and this was his 
home residence for more than thirty years. 
Upon his location at St. Anthony Falls mow a 
part of Minneapolis) he abandoned the active 
practice of his profession and engaged in the 
real estate business, and with this pursuit, 
after more than forty-two years' residence in 
Minneapolis, he is still prominently identified. 
Subsequent to his location at St. Anthony, 
he became so intimately associated in business 
affairs with his brother, Richard, that in 1865 



the copartnership of Chute Brothers was 
formed, and into the business of this firm t In- 
most of the individual interests of the two 
brothers were merged. With the early history, 
and especially with the growth and develop- 
ment, of Minneapolis, from an insignificant 
frontier village to a city of metropolitan pro- 
portions. Dr. Chute has always been intimately 
and inHueiitially connected and identified. A 
leading feature of Dr. Chute's identification 
with the material interests of Minneapolis has 
been his connection with the development and 
utilization of the water power of St. Anthony 
Falls — the greatest factor in the city's up- 
building and greatness. When, in 1850, the St. 
Anthony Falls Water Power Company was or- 
ganized, his brother, Richard Chute, who had 
secured the company's charter, became its 
agent, and continued in this position until 
LS68. In that year Dr. Chute, by virtue of a 
power of attorney, became the agent in place 
of his brother, and so acted up to 1880, when 
the property was sold to .1. J. Hill and others, 
although he continued to serve under the new 
owners for a year thereafter. At one time tin 
Chute Brothers owned the entire stock of the 
water power company, and the Doctor was a 
director in the company for some time before 
lie became its agent. When the greatest and 
most valuable improvements were made in 
the falls, Dr. Chute was supervisor of the work 
of construction and had general charge of the 
work; the engineer was .1. T. Stevens. He had 
charge of all the improvements until the Gen 
oral Government took charge of the work, 
with Colonel Farquhar as superintendent. 
While the work of repairing the great ''apron'' 
in aid of the preservation of tin- falls was in 
progress the Doctor, as executive officer of the 
board of construction, was in charge, with Mr. 
J. T. Stevens as engineer. During the long and 
active career of his brother, Richard, the Doc- 
tor had entire charge of the details of the busi- 
ness of the firm of Chute Brothers. They 
erected several blocks of business houses, con- 
spicuously some of the most substantial strut- 
tures of the kind on the St. Anthony or east 
side of the river; they graded streets; 1 1 1 1 ■ \ 
planted thousands of shade trees, and made 



196 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



large expenditures in establishing other public 
improvements of utility and adornment. The 
firm is now styled Chute Unit hers Company, 
and is still regarded as one of the most impor- 
tant business institutions of the city. Its 
members are Samuel II. Chute, president; Wil- 
liam Y. Chute la son of Richard), vice-presi- 
dent; James T. Chute (a brother), secretary 
and treasurer. Dr. Chute has in time past been 
prominently connected with the official affairs 
of his adopted city. As long ago as 1858 he 
was supervisor of the poor, serving without 
pay. He served several terms as a member of 
the board of aldermen, and for some time was 
city treasurer. He was the author of a reform 
that was of great and substantial benefit, and 
which saved the county of Hennepin large 
sums of money, for it was by his personal ef- 
forts and influence that the county commis- 
sioners were induced to purchase the county 
poor farm and erect thereon a poor house for 
the support and care of the poor and indigent. 
He was also one of the founders of the city's 
public school system. For a long time he was 
president of the board of education, and he 
has always taken an active interest in school 
matters. In politics he has always been loyal 
to the principles of the Republican party, al- 
though in early manhood he was a Democrat. 
He is known as a high-minded, honorable gen- 
tleman, a public spirited citizen, always a 
leader in public affairs, a willing and liberal 
contributor to every enterprise for the public 
good, and no other man stands higher in gen- 
eral esteem in the great city, which he has 
helped so much to build. Dr. Chute was mar- 
ried May 5, 1858, to Miss Helen E. A. Day. He 
has a family of three daughters and two sons: 
Mary, Agnes, I Jessie, Louis 1'. and Fred B. — 
both the sons are in the practice of law in 
Minneapolis. 



CYRUS NORTHROP. 

Measured by the results of his labor — the 
growth of the university and the elevation of 
its educational standard — Cyrus Northrop, 
LL. D., president of the University of Minne- 
sota, is one of the foremost educators of Amer- 
ica and one of the most influential citizens of 



the Northwest. Mr. Northrop is a native of 
Connecticut, the sou of Cyrus Northrop, a 
farmer of that State, and Polly B. Fancher, 
a native of New York. He was born at Ridge- 
field, September 30, 1834, on the farm. His 
education was carefully supervised from child- 
hood, and as thorough in its preparation for 
the larger duties and more responsible posi 
tions in life as the best institutions of New 
England could make it. He first attended the 
primary common school, and at the age of 
eleven he was placed in an academy at Ridge- 
field, under the tuition of H. S. Banks and Rev. 
Chauncey Wilcox, both of whom were gradu- 
ates of Yale. After an attendance of six years 
in this school, which is remembered with a de- 
gree of sentiment, because it was held in tin 
house in which "Peter Parley" was born, he 
finished in one year his preparatory work in 
the famous Williston Seminary at East Hamp- 
ton, Massachusetts, and in the fall of lSr>2, at 
the age of eighteen, entered Yale. His habit 
of study was so fixed as to render it easy for 
him to master the classical curriculum. As 
evidence of thoroughness it may be stated that 
he was graduated third in a class of one hun- 
dred and eight members. His relish for col- 
lege life was keen, and his talent sufficiently 
versatile to appropriate all that it offers for 
culture and social entertainment, in addition 
to the regular courses of study. He had mem- 
bership in four Creek fraternities, and in the 
rather exclusive "Skull and Rones." Re was 
also first president of the "Brothers of Unity." 
a literary society of high repute and wide pop- 
ularity. Before his graduation, in 1N.">7. Mr. 
Northrop had definitely formed the purpose of 
entering the legal profession, and in pursuance 
of that purpose he entered the Law School of 
Yale the same year and remained two years to 
complete the regular course of study, mean- 
while discharging the duties of tutor of Greek 
and Latin in a private school, and preparing 
two classes for the literary course of the uni- 
versity. On leaving the law school lie con 
tinned his preparation for practice in the law 
office of tin' Hon. Charles Ives of New Haven. 
It was on the eve of that memorable political 
contest between the forces of libertv and slav- 



P.IOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



t q; 



cry, to be followed immediately by the more 
desperate military struggle to determine which 
of the two policies should have permanent 
ascendancy in the government. Lincoln had 
said, in 1858, with the prevision of a prophet. 
that the time would come when the territory 
of the United States must be either all slave 
or all free, and however disguised by specious 
platform declarations, there was a deep con- 
sciousness in the people. North and South, that 
the sentiment phrased by Lincoln was in some 
vital sense under Providence, the issue in- 
volved in his election to the Presidency. Mo- 
mentous consequences hinged on the issue. 
The tension was inordinate. Capable, edu- 
cated young men felt the stress and were 
impelled to declare themselves. Mr. Northrop 
participated in the campaign with his con 
science, his ability and his energy, for liberty 
and the individual union of all the States. 
Law studies were abandoned and future pros 
pects put aside for the graver questions of 
public concern. The consideration of National 
politics was recognized as the paramount duty 
of the individual, and active prominence in 
the work of the campaign naturally identified 
Mr. Northrop with State affairs for the time 
being. He was first appointed assistant clerk 
of the Connecticut House of Representatives, 
and the next year made clerk, and the year 
after clerk of the Senate. While this political 
service was foreign to his original purpose, it 
was compensatory in affording the opportunity 
to become familiar with practical politics and 
form an acquaintance with men prominent in 
affairs. And so it was not surprising that he 
gave up his law office in 1862 — opened at Nor 
walk for practice the previous year — and en- 
gaged for one year as editor of the New Haven 
Daily Palladium, the leading and most influ- 
ential Republican newspaper of the State. The 
labor of this position was arduous, but at the 
same time it was great in the measure of influ- 
ence, the clear and forcible discussion of the 
grave and original questions of public policy 
raised by the exigencies of the Civil War. 
What was at first intended to be only a tem- 
porary interruption of his course of life pre- 
viously determined upon, served at last to 



change its current, broaden its sweep and mul- 
tiply its beneficent influences. In 1863 he was 
called to the chair of rhetoric and English 
literature in Yale, which he filled with marked 
ability and distinction for a period of twenty- 
one years. The place came to him without his 
seeking, and as a result of his superior quali- 
fications, known to the president and trustees 
of the university. In 1884 he received a unan- 
imous call to the presidency of the University 
of Minnesota, without having in any sense been 
an applicant for the place, and indeed, without 
any knowledge of the consideration of his 
name. Previous to that time he made a single 
trip to the Northwest, and that was with his 
family, for pleasure, in 1881. President North 
rop was admirably qualified for his new 
responsibilities by broad and thorough schol- 
arship, by knowledge of the principles of the 
law, by familiar acquaintance with great men. 
by active participation in political affairs for 
twenty-five years, by sympathy with the ambi- 
tions and aspirations of the young, by com- 
plete practical understanding of the system, 
the aim and method of university education, 
and by a high order of executive ability. 
Added to all these qualifications are the qual- 
ities of mind and heart which attract individ- 
uals and masses to him. His greeting is 
cordial, his manner frank, his intercourse dig 
nified and sincere. He is gifted with the rare 
and gracious assemblage of faculties by which 
the lovable man is enabled to acquire and hold 
the affection and confidence of students and 
others with whom intimate relations are main- 
tained. The growth of the University of Min- 
nesota and its high standing among the great 
universities of the country attest the posses 
siiin by its president of the highest capability 
for the position. When he was installed the 
total enrollment of students was less than 
three hundred; in 1898 it was twenty-eight 
hundred and ninety. The number of college 
buildings has been increased twenty fold, and 
the number of departments is adequate to the 
complete functions of a first-class university. 
fie has a well balanced mind and a well 
ordered life, lie is progressive always. A 
member of the faculty of another univer- 



iqS 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



sity says: "He is ;i man of great tact, of 
warm-hearted disposition, sterling common 
sense and transparent integrity." Many de- 
mands arc made upon his time for lectures and 
public addresses, and his custom is, whenever 
practicable, to comply with these demands. 
His oratory extends the fame of the university. 
In 1886 the degree of LL. D. was conferred on 
him by Yale. Dr. Northrop is an orator com- 
bining the grace and exactitude desirable on 
the college rostrum, the polish and amplitude 
essential to the lecture platform, the logic, 
humor and force required on the hustings, the 
versatility and adaptation which flx his reputa- 
tion as the most popular after-dinner speaker 
of the entire Northwest. In Connecticut he 
was once a candidate for Congress, and for 
eight years, under Presidents Grant and 
Hayes, he was collector of the port of New 
Haven. Now, instead of the expenditure of 
personal energy in partisan discussions on the 
stump, his political influence is more widely 
and effectively exerted through the many thou- 
sands of young men who come under his in- 
struction. Dr. Northrop is a Congregationalist 
and has been very prominent in the affairs of 
that denomination. In 188!) he was moderator 
of the National Council held that year in Wor- 
cester, Massachusetts. He was also a delegate 
to the International Congregational Council 
held in London, England, in the summer of 
1891, and lie was one of the two vice-presidents 
appointed from America. He was married. 
September 30, 1862, to Miss Anna Elizabeth 
Warren, daughter of Joseph Warren of Stam- 
ford, Connecticut. Their eldest daughter, Min- 
nie, died at the age of ten years and six 
months; their son, Cyrus, Jr., is a graduate of 
I be University of Minnesota; their daughter. 
Elizabeth, entered the University, but on ac- 
count of ill health did not graduate. 



CHARLES E. VANDERBURGH. 

The late Judge Charles Edwin Vanderburgh, 
of Minneapolis, was born in Saratoga county, 
New York, December 2, 1820. He was ex- 
tracted from thrifty Holland-Dutch stock, and 



his father was a tiller of the soil. His child 
hood was passed on the home farm, where, 
through rural activities, he developed a robust- 
ness of physique befitting as a foundation to 
that mental vigor which has made the name 
of Vanderburgh one of the most distinguished 
in the history of Minnesota. Beginning his 
education in the neighboring country schools, 
he took a preparatory course at Homer Acad 
emy, New York, and in 184!) was ready for 
college. Having decided upon Yale for his 
alma mater, he entered that institution, grad- 
uating in the class of 1852 with a full share 
of the honors. During the next three years he 
was engaged as principal of the academy at 
Oxford, New York. Along with his pedagogic 
duties, however, he found time to pursue a 
course of law-reading under the direction of 
the famous attorney, Henry R. Mygatt. In 1855 
he was admitted to the bar, and soon after- 
wards set out for the West, little knowing 
what successes he was to achieve, yet, perhaps, 
vaguely anticipating them through the subtle 
sense of power which great abilities give, even 
to tlie most modest. Tile winter of 1855-6 he 
spent in Chicago, proceeding in the following 
April to Minneapolis. Soon after his arrival 
there he entered into a legal partnership with 
E. R. E. Cornell, who was subsequently Justice 
of the Supreme Court. Within three years the 
excellencies of his character and his work had 
so enlisted the general confidence and esteem 
that, although not yet turned thirty, he was 
elected Judge of the Fourth Judicial District. 
This was in 1859, at the first election after 
Minnesota had been admitted to the Union, 
and young Vanderburgh was the first resident 
of Minneapolis upon whom this compliment 
was conferred. The district over which lie was 
to have jurisdiction at that time comprised 
fifteen counties, and extended north to the 
British possessions, lie received three re- 
elections to this post, in 1866, 187:5 and 1880, 
respectively, and was for eighteen years the 
only judge sitting at Minneapolis. In 1876, 
however, A. II. Young was appointed Asso- 
ciate Justice. In 1S81 Judge Vanderburgh 
resigned his position as a district functionary, 
being at that time elected to the Supreme 




&&& 



2> La_cXa^\^ 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



!<)■) 



Judgeship. This lie retained until 1S!)4, being 
re-elected in 1887. In the election of 1892 he 
was renominated l>y the Republicans, but the 
Populists united with the Democrats to swell 
that memorable Cleveland wave, and Vander- 
burgh was defeated, Ruck and Canty being the 
winning candidates. But Judge Vanderburgh 
had already been upon the bench, District and 
Supreme, for over thirty-five years, and had 
made a record not easy to rival. When he en 
tered the judicial field the youthful State had 
as yet no settled code of jurisprudence, and 
upon Judge Vanderburgh there necessarily 
devolved the responsibility of helping to estab- 
lish precedents for such a code by broad origi- 
nal research and action. So able and con- 
scientious was he in this independent work, 
however, that it is said not one of the thou- 
sands of causes which were brought before him 
for adjudication was decided other than to the 
perfect satisfaction, not only of the winning 
snitor, but of the unsuccessful party as well. 
But it was in the determining of fine points in 
equity that his discriminating and adjusting 
faculties reached their highest play; and it 
was through the superiority of his work in this 
class of cases that he gained his broadest rep- 
utation. Atwater's History of Minneapolis, 
which contains a sketch of the Judge, makes 
the following confident assertion: ''Judge Van- 
derburgh was the greatest administrator of 
equity jurisprudence the State ever saw." 
Judge Vanderburgh was twice married, fir^t, 
in 1857, to Miss Julia Mygatt, daughter of Wil- 
liam Mygatt, a wealthy, retired resident of 
Oxford, New York, and second cousin of Henry 
K. Mygatt, under whom, as a youth, our sub- 
ject had read law. This wife died in 1863, 
leaving two children, a boy and a girl, and ten 
years later the Judge was united in marriage 
to Miss Anna Culbert, of Broadalbin, Fulton 
county, New York. The only child of this 
latter union, Isabella, died in 189?.. Mrs. Van 
derburgh is still living, and resides in Minne- 
apolis. Of the two children of the former 
marriage, the daughter was early deceased. 
The son. William H., resides in Minneapolis. On 
March 3, 1898, Judge Vanderburgh passed out 
of this life, leaving behind him a record of 



integrity and professional achievement which 
wiin for aim exceptional honor while living, 
and which his contemporaries in Minnesota 
hold up as a worthy and brilliant example to 



the rising generation. 



MARTIN B. KOON. 



Judge Martin B. Koon, of Minneapolis, sen- 
ior member of the well-known law firm of 
Koon, Whelan & Bennett, was born January 
22, 1841, at Altay, Schuyler county, New York. 
His ancestry on his father's side is, Scotch, 
and on his mother's side Connecticut Yankee. 
His father, Alanson Koon, was a farmer in 
moderate circumstances, in Schuyler county. 
New York, a man of sterling Christian char- 
acter. His mother's maiden name was Marilla 
Wells, and Mr. Koon is wont to speak of her in 
terms of deep affection and the most profound 
reverence for her memory. She was a woman 
of strong character, and deeply impressed 
herself upon her children. The most valuable 
legacy which his parents bequeathed to him 
was habits of industry, indomitable persever- 
ance, never-failing energy, and a mind natur- 
ally active and studious. While he was yet a 
lad his father removed with his family to 
Hillsdale county, Michigan, where Martin 
grew T up on a farm. He recalls that the first 
money he ever earned was by riding a horse 
for a neighbor while plowing corn. Mr. Koon 
attended the winter schools, as most farmer 
boys did in those days, and worked on the 
farm in summer. He pursued his studies, how- 
ever, with such diligence that, at the age of 
seventeen, he was prepared to enter Hillsdale 
College. During his college course he supple- 
mented his limited resources by teaching school 
several terms, but kept up his studies and 
completed his course in 1863. He had, how- 
ever, labored so hard as a student as to se- 
riously impair his health, and in 1864, a change 
of climate becoming necessary, he made a trip 
to California by way of the Isthmus. The 
change was beneficial, and after remaining 
two years in California, engaged in teaching, 
he returned to Michigan to take up the studj 



200 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



of law in the office of his brother, Ezra L. 
Koon. In 1867 he was admitted to the bar in 
Hillsdale, Michigan, and soon afterwards en- 
tered into partnership with his brother, under 
the firm name of E. L. & M. B. Koon, which 
association continued until 1878. While he 
did not go actively into politics, he was elected 
to the office of prosecuting attorney on the 
Republican ticket in Hillsdale county, in 1870 
to 1874. In ls7:'« he spent four months in 
travel in Europe. In the meantime he had be- 
come convinced that Hillsdale did not offer a 
sufficient field for the exercise of his talent, 
and, in 1878, he removed to Minneapolis. His 
career since he came to this city is briefly but 
ably summarized as follows, by one who is in 
a position to know Judge Koon, as a lawyer 
and as a man, as well as any one living: 

"Beginning practice in Minneapolis. Judge 
Koon almost immediately ascended to the front 
rank of his profession, and soon came to be 
recognized as one of the few leaders at the 
bar of Minneapolis, and of the State. In 1883 
a vacancy occurred on the District Bench, and 
at the unanimous solicitation of the Hennepin 
county bar he was appointed to fill this vacan- 
cy. At the election following he was chosen 
without opposition for the term of seven years. 
When later he decided to retire from the bench 
his resignation was regarded as a great misfor- 
tune by the entire profession and the whole 
community. During his occupancy of that pi>- 
sition he decided some of the most important 
cases ever tried in his Judicial District, and 
his decisions, when appealed, were almost in- 
variably affirmed. Possessed of fine legal 
attainments, with a remarkable ability to de- 
cide quickly, and an unusually keen sense of 
the dividing line between right and wrong, 
between justice and injustice, he combined all 
the elements requisite for an able and upright 
judge." 

On retiring from the bench. Judge Koon re- 
sumed the practice of law, and is now the 
senior member of the firm of Koon. Whelan iS. 
Bennett, which enjoys one of the most desir- 
able and lucrative practices in Minneapolis. 
Judge Koon is a member of the Minneapolis 
club, the Commercial Club, the Chamber of 
Commerce, and a trustee of the Church of the 
Redeemer. He was married in November, 



1873, to Josephine Vandermark of Phelps, New 
York. To them have been born two daughters, 
Katheriue Estelle and Marilla Louise. 



CHARLES A. PILLSBURY. 

The Pillsbury family has borne high honors 
both in the civil and military history of New 
England for nearly three centuries, and tin 
larger number of its members have discharged 
Hie inconspicuous duties of private life in a 
manner alike meritorious and unobtrusive. 
Some of them have achieved eminence in com- 
mercial pursuits, and some in politics and 
statesmanship in the boundless empire of the 
Northwest. The family was transplanted in 
America by Joshua Pillsbury, who emigrated 
from England and settled in Newburyport, 
Massachusetts, in 1690. He was there the 
beneficiary of a land grant, the title of a por- 
tion of which has never been alienated, but 
passed by descent to his children and their 
descendants down to the present time. One 
branch of the family settled early in New 
Hampshire, and from this branch Charles 
Alfred Pillsbury descended. He was born at 
Warner, New Hampshire, October .'?, 1842, the 
son of George A. Pillsbury and Margaret S. 
Carleton. His maternal ancestors were also 
Puritans of the staunchest character. His 
education was begun in the public schools of 
his native town, continued in the New London 
Academy, where he was prepared for college 
at the age of sixteen, and completed in Dart- 
mouth, from which he was graduated in 1862 
at the age of twenty. The term "completed" 
as applied to education is misleading, since it 
means only the acquirements obtained in the 
schools. The completion of a course in college 
is in reality only the preparation for that 
larger practical school of life which a man 
enters after securing his diploma. And this 
was eminently so with Charles A. Pillsbury. 
Having that strong moral fibre which is the 
resultant of pure breeding and correct train- 
ing for generations in the best New England 
families of Puritanic lineage, and equipped 
with the best learning of the schools; guided 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



201 



by a financial and commercial instinct strong 
enough to dominate his whole life, he began 
as a merchant's clerk at Montreal. For six 
rears he remained in Canada at merchandis- 
ing, and then saw afar oh" the opportunities 
awaiting the ambitious and sagacious in the 
northwestern portion of the United Stales. 
Mr. Pillsbury came to Minneapolis, and his 
location in the young city really marked the 
•opening of his business career. He saw the 
enormous waste of power in the waters of 
the Mississippi rushing over the Falls of St. 
Anthony, and looked out upon the vast wheat 
fields in proximity. The utilization of this 
power in the manufacture of flour was the 
problem in which he became early and deeply 
interested. The only available means at hand 
was a mill of small capacity and a reputation 
for bad flour, which the millers were disposed 
to charge to the inferior quality of the wheat. 
He purchased, on time, a third interest in this 
mill, agreeing to pay therefor the sum of 
flfl.OOO. This afforded opportunity for the ex- 
ercise of genius and public spirit, and the 
ultimate gratification of an ambition to be 
something more than a plodder. Mr. Pillsbury 
was unwilling lo condemn the wheat with 
wholesale condemnation, until he should first 
avail himself of the inventor's genius by the 
introduction of the best machinery and ap- 
pliances for the "rinding of the wheat, the 
separation of the different parts of the grain, 
which he deemed essential to the production 
of pure flour. His efforts were so successful 
that the first year demonstrated the wisdom 
of his expenditure of ten thousand dollars for 
the firm in improving the mill's equipment. 
He was among the first to adopt the steel 
rollers as a substitute for the buhrs compris- 
ing the "upper and nether millstone" of 
sacred history; but lon^ before this substitu- 
tion, Pillsbury's flour had gained a wide repu- 
tation. He found out by actual demonstration, 
what he had at first suspected, that the mills 
and the millers were responsible for the failure 
to manufacture first-class flour from spring- 
wheat. From the beginning, ex-Governor 
Pillsbury was a member of the firm, and, in 
1872, George A. Pillsbury, father of Charles. 



was admitted to the partnership, and subse- 
quently Fred C. Pillsbury was added to 
the firm, which conducted business in the name 
of Charles A. Pillsbury & Co., until all of the 
large mills at Minneapolis were bought by an 
English syndicate, and consolidated in the 
name of the Pillsbury- Washburn Flour Mills 
Company. Limited, of London. The Pillsbury 
family retained a considerable part of the 
stock, and Mr. Charles A. Pillsbury continued 
to manage the business of the combined prop- 
erties with great success until his death, 
September 17, 1899. As early as 1882, Mr. 
Pillsbury. for his firm, adopted the policy of 
sharing profits with his employes, and at the 
end of eight years he said in a published in- 
terview, "We have divided profits during five 
years out of the eight." Continuing the inter- 
view, he said: "I was first led to adopt the 
system of profit-sharing from a desire to enter 
into some plan which would more equitably 
divide the profits between capital and labor. 
Of course the continual agitation of the labor 
question called my attention to the subject; 
Imii there was no disaffection among my own 
employes, so far as I was aware. On the con- 
trary, our relations with our employes were 
and always have been so harmonious that 
there has never been any intimation of a strike. 
As to the details of a profit-sharing scheme, I 
was not influenced by what others had done, 
and at thai time knew absolutely nothing of 
the experience of others or the results of any 
kindred experiments." After a trial of many 
years, Mr. Pillsbury became convinced that 
the system of profit-sharing in a business 
which depends largely upon the carefulness 
and skill of employes, is profitable to the com- 
pany. It actually enhances the earning capac- 
iiv of the men employed by increasing their 
interest in the production due to a conscious- 
ness of proprietorship. It tends to promote 
good feeling between capital and labor, and 
fosters unity of purpose to make the output 
as large as possible for the mutual advantage 
of all concerned. His view of the value of 
labor differed from the popular idea that the 
rate of wages should be regulated solely by 
the law of supply and demand. He would 



202 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



consider the question in its equitable aspect 

and pay whatever is right — what the laborer 
is worth — rather than take advantage of his 
aecessities when (he supply is great and the 
competition severe. There is a plain distinction 
between cooperation and profit-sharing. In 
a business or industry employing large capital 
and subjected to keen competition, executive 
ability of very high order is required, and 
while co-operation is impracticable, the system 
of profit-sharing may be introduced with ad- 
vantage to the capital as well as the labor 
employed. Mr. Pillsbury, always a man of 
public spirit and devoted to duty as a citizen 
and a man, never sought political office, but 
uniformly discouraged all efforts to bring him 
before the public as a candidate. When urged 
to accept a nomination for Congressman, he 
declared he would not accept the office as a 
gift. Although pre-eminently qualified by his 
practical views, the result of successful ex- 
perience in business and manufacturing, he 
said to intimate friends who urged his accept- 
ance of the honor: "I would rather be a first- 
class miller than a second-rate Congressman." 
He gave liberally to worthy organized chari- 
ties, and assisted the individual cases of 
poverty that came under his observation with 
a generous hand. Perhaps the crowning glory 
of his useful life was the disinterested service 
in behalf of the sufferers from the disastrous 
forest fires of September, 1S94, in which four 
hundred square miles of territory were swept 
by the flames, and more than four hundred 
persons lost their lives, and more than three 
thousand lost their homes. As chairman of 
the commission of five noble men appointed 
by the Governor to provide ways and means 
for the relief of those who had suffered, Mr. 
Pillsbury set about the work, actuated by 
characteristic philanthropy and qualified by 
commanding executive ability. His probity 
was a guarantee that every dollar contributed 
for relief would be honestly accounted for; his 
practical experience and sound judgment as- 
sured the wise and judicious expenditure of 
every dollar placed in the hands of the com- 
mission. He regarded the duty as a sacred 
trust, and devoted his time and energy for 



six months to carrying out the plans of the 
commission. A comfortable house was built 
for each family whose home had been de- 
stroyed, or the equivalent thereof was paid in 
cash. Every lot on which a new home was 
built was first made free and clear of mort- 
gage. If the home had been destroyed on a 
mortgaged farm, the commission obtained 
from the mortgagee a release of two acres on 
which to build the new home, so that it might. 
not be taken for the debt. In this manner the 
relief was not only made immediately helpful, 
but the beneficence was permanent. All the 
relief was rendered, not as charity, but as a 
means of enabling the victims of a misfortune, 
for which they were in no wise responsible, to 
help themselves. Rev. William Wilkinson, of 
Minneapolis, who had charge of the first relief 
party sent out after the Are, says: ''The service 
of Mr. Pillsbury on that commission cannot 
be overstated. The cause was worthy, and 
grandly did he measure up to all the require- 
ments." Mr. Pillsbury was an attendant upon 
the services of Plymouth Congregational 
church, of Minneapolis, and long a member of 
its board of trustees. He was married Sep- 
tember V2, 1866, to Mary A. Stinsou, of 
Goffstown, New Hampshire, daughter of ("apt. 
Charles Stinson. Two sons, Charles Stinson 
and John Sargent Pillsbury, Jr., are the fruit 
of that marriage. They are twins, fine, sturdy, 
young men. students in the University of 
Minnesota at the time of their father's death. 



DANIEL BUCK. 



Judge Daniel Buck, late of the Supreme 
Court of Minnesota, was born at Boonville, 
New York, September 8, 1829, the second of 
a family of six children, whose parents were 
Jonathan and Roxana (Wheelock) Buck. On 
the paternal side he is a descendant of Isaac 
Buck, who, with his wife, Frances Marsh, and 
others refused to take the "oath of conform 
ity" to the Established church, was forcibly 
transported from England to Boston in the 
ship "Amelia." in October, 1635. Isaac Buck- 
settled at Scituate. Massachusetts, and is thus 




Th& Qtnlujy Putlisniiiy &£nyiwmj Co ChUMpv 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



203 



described in the history of the town: "He 
was a very useful man, often engaged in public 
business, and was the clerk of the town for 
many years. He was a lieutenant in King 
Philip's War, and repulsed the Indians with 
great loss from Scituate, in March, 1676. He 
died in 1695." Isaac Buck's eldest son, Thomas 
— the Judge's great-grandfather — lived in 
Bridge water, Massachusetts, prior to 1712. 
His son, Daniel — for whom the Judge was 
named — was a soldier in the War of the Revo- 
lution, enlisting twice, first in 1778 or 17711, at 
the age of sixteen or seventeen, in Captain 
Bonney's Company of Colonel Portei*'s Regi- 
ment; and again in 1780 in Captain Smith's 
Company of Colonel Richard's Regiment of 
Massachusetts State troops. He settled at 
Boonville, New York, in about 1800, and died 
in 1843. His son, Jonathan Buck, the father 
of Judge Buck, was born at Boonville, in De- 
cember, 1804, and died May 2, 1883. He was 
a prosperous farmer, and spent all his life on 
the farm where he was born. His wife, the 
mother of Judge Buck, Roxana Wheelock (born 
at Claremont, New Hampshire, in 1799, died 
November 3, 1842), was of Quaker ancestry. 
She was a sister of Col. Charles Wheelock, 
who during the War of the Rebellion was 
colonel of the 97th New York Volunteers, and 
was brevetted a brigadier general. Judge 
Buck was reared to manhood on his father's 
farm. He was educated in the common schools, 
and at Rome and Lowville Academies, New 
York. After leaving school he studied law, 
was admitted to the bar, and engaged in the 
practice of his profession with uniform success 
from the first. In the spring of 1857, he came 
to Minnesota, arriving in the then Territory, 
May 15. He pre-empted a homestead near 
Madelia, in Watonwan county, but the same 
year located in Blue Earth, which has ever 
since been his home county. The circum- 
stances personal to himself on his location on 
the frontier were fortuitous. He was twenty- 
seven years of age, a thoroughly equipped 
lawyer, of fine mental attainments, of splendid 
physical proportions, and of striking and a I 
tractive presence — qualities especially admired 
by the people of a new country. At once he 



became popular and prominent. The following 
year he was elected to the Legislature, but 
certain circumstances prevented the assem- 
bling of that body in that year and he did not 
serve. In 1859, when he had been but two 
years in Minnesota, he was the Democratic 
candidate for Secretary of State on a ticket 
headed by Gen. George L. Becker for Governor, 
but the Republicans won. Upon first coming 
to Blue Earth county, he opened a law office 
at South Bend, then a flourishing and promis- 
ing village at the southern angle of the great 
bend of the Minnesota river, four miles west 
of Mankato. In 1SG5 he removed to Mankato, 
where he has since resided. Judge Buck has 
been the man pre-eminent whom the people 
of Mankato and Blue Earth county have ever 
delighted to honor. They have placed him iu 
public positions frequently, and he has always 
been their faithful servant. Yet he has never 
been an office seeker or a place hunter, and 
his preferments have always come to him un- 
sought. In 1805 he was elected to the Legis- 
lature, and in the session of 18G6, while a 
member of the House of Representatives, he 
secured the enactment of the law locating the 
State Normal School at Mankato. He had 
the principal charge of the construction of the 
buildings of this school, of which he is con- 
sidered virtually the founder. For five years 
he was a member of the State Normal School 
Board, and was prominent in the location of 
and the selection of sites for the schools at 
Winona and St. Cloud, as well as at Mankato. 
He was for four years county attorney of Blue 
Earth county. In 1878 he was elected to the 
State Senate for the full term of four years. 
He was the author of that most beneficent 
measure, the insolvent law enacted by the 
Legislature of 1881, and while a State Senator 
was a member of the court of impeachment 
on the trial of Judge E. St. Julien Cox. He 
has always been a substantial friend of and 
closely identified with the moral and material 
interests of the city of Mankato, where he has 
made his hospitable and pleasant home. He 
was city attorney for several years, and for 
five years was a member of the city school 
board. He was the first president of the Man- 



204 



I HOOKA PHY OF MINNESOTA. 



kato National Bank, and lias been vice-presi- 
dent and a director of the Citizen's National 
Bank. For many years he was a member and 
the secretary of the Blue Earth County Agri- 
cultural Society, and he has been the owner 
of some of the best farms in the Slate. As 
a lawyer he has been prominent and distin- 
guished. Early in his professional career in 
Minnesota, he was associate counsel for the 
State in the great legal controversy over the 
"Five Million Loan Bill," and since has been 
counsel in a large number of prominent and 
celebrated cases. His legal business has 
always been large, its success most marked, 
and its results practical and profitable. His 
thorough and profound knowledge of the law, 
his dignified and high-toned conduct as a 
practitioner, and his abilities as an advocate 
and "trial lawyer" have won for him the sin- 
cerest confidence and admiration of his 
brethren of the legal profession, while his 
personal worth has given him the esteem of 
the general public. No other man is closer 
to the people of Minnesota or more securely 
placed in their affections, than the man whom 
many of them call "Honest Old Dan Buck." 
Judge Buck has always been a member of the 
Democratic party, a firm believer in its prin- 
ciples as enunciated and established by 
Jefferson, and maintained by a long list of 
succeeding American statesmen. He is of the 
old school of Democratic tenets, of the "Old 
Guard" in their defence, and believes that, 
though often violated and their usefulness 
stifled, they can never perish so long as the 
Constitution and the Republic shall endure. 
Principles which are elementary and funda- 
mental can never pass away. As stated, in 
1859 he was his party's candidate for Secretary 
of State; in 1888 he was its candidate for 
Lieutenant Governor, but on each occasion 
was defeated with his ticket. He was a dele- 
gate to the National Democratic Convention 
at St. Louis, in 1870, which nominated Tilden 
and Hendricks. In 1892 he was nomi- 
nated by the Democratic and Peoples' par- 
ties for Judge of the Supreme Court, and 
was elected by a large majority. His official 
term was to commence in January, 1894, and 



to expire in January, 1900; but in October, 
189:5, he was appointed a member of the court 
to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resigna- 
tion of Judge D. A. Dickinson. He served on 
the Supreme Bench from October, 189:5, until 
November, 1899, when he resigned. During 
his long official career in the service of the 
people and the State. Judge Buck has never 
accepted or used a pass on any railroad or 
transportation line, of his career on the 
bench, a prominent attorney well and truth- 
fully says: 

"No man of greater purity of character, none 
of more integrity, none of a higher sense and 
love of justice, none with a more solemn reali- 
zation of the equality of all men before the 
law, ever sat upon the bench of our Supreme 
Court. If it be the end of all law and all courts 
to decree justice, Judge Buck discharges his 
duties with the attributes of a great jurist. 
If justice be done it matters little by what 
display of erudition it is accomplished. Judge 
Buck's greatest worth to the people was his 
ability to do 'equal and exact justice to all 
men' and to go straight to the point." 

Judge Buck is not a member of any religious 
denomination, and does not air his pretensions 
to morality or do his good works "to be seen 
of men." His sympathies are — more than with 
any other religious doctrine — largely with the 
principles of those simple, honest folk, the 
Quakers, of which sect his good mother was a 
member. He was married at Elgin, Illinois, 
( >ctober 25, 1858, to Miss Lovisa A. Wood. Of 
this union were born three children, viz: 
Charles Delos Buck, born February 24, 1S04, 
and died, while a student in the Slate Univer- 
sity, at Colton, California, November 27, 1882; 
Alfred A. Buck, born April 10, 1872; and 
Laura M. Ruck, born June 15, 1874, and now 
Mrs. W. L. Abbott, of St. Paul. Mrs. Buck 
died December 30, 1899. 



ROYAL D. CONE. 



The late Royal Day Cone, the memory of 
whom is still fresh in the hearts of many citi- 
zens of Winona, Minnesota, was born Novem- 
ber 8, 1821, in the village of New Berlin, 




AL^cLt 



• 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



205 



Chenango county, New York. His parents 
were Benjamin and Elizabeth (Root) Cone, he 
being their second son. They belonged to a 
fanning community, and the subject of this 
memoir grew up amid rural scenes, helping 
with the tilling of the soil between the terms 
of the district school, at which he acquired 
his early education. While still under age, 
he accepted a clerical position in one of the 
stores of New Berlin. After gaining some 
business experience and a little capital in this 
subordinate capacity, he determined to venture 
in an independent enterprise, and, going to 
Rochester, New York, he engaged in a mer- 
cantile business, which he continued to conduct 
in that city until 1855. In the year just men- 
tioned he came west and located in Winona, 
which was the city of his home for the re- 
mainder of his life — a period of forty-three 
years. Soon after becoming a resident of 
Winona he established himself in the hardware 
business, on the same site later occupied by 
the corporation, founded by him — the R. I). 
Cone Company. Winona was scarcely more 
than a straggling pioneer settlement at the 
time Mr. Cone took his place among her citi- 
zens, and he was prominently associated with 
her evolution from that early crudity to the 
developed and thriving status she presents to- 
day. Mr. Cone was a man of strictest integrity 
of principle, which was applied even to the 
minute details of business; and while lie took 
care to do justice to every man with whom 
he had dealings, Justice prospered his own 
interests. His business grew steadily until it 
reached, in the natural course of events, the 
dignity of a corporate institution, with Mr. 
Cone as president. The R, D. Cone Company, 
which was still flourishing when its chief be- 
came deceased, was for many years one of the 
leading wholesale firms of the State. During 
the period of his citizenship in Winona, Mr. 
< 1 one served in high municipal offices, and was 
identified with many and varied lesser public 
functions; and this in spite of the fact that 
he was of a nature which shrank at all times 
from publicity, which shows how strongly his 
abilities and virtues were appreciated in his 
community. In the early days of his residence 



in the city, he was persuaded to become a 
member of the board of school directors, and, 
as alderman from the Second ward, he served 
in the city council. In 18CG he was elected 
mayor of the city of Winona, and upon the 
expiration of his first term was re-elected for 
a second, his administration during both 
terms being markedly efficient and satisfactory. 
He early joined the Old Settlers' Association 
of Winona County, and was one of the most 
active members of that organization. He 
played a very energetic and effective part in 
furthering the organization of the Winona & 
Western Railway, and was made a director of 
the company. He was, also, at the time of his 
death, one of the directors of the First National 
Bank, and of the Winona Wagon Company. 
Mr. Cone was married in the year 1849, in his 
native town of New Berlin, New York, to Miss 
Ruena Merchant. Four children were born to 
them, namely: Ida E., Etta M., Frank R. and 
Hattie R, The first-named— the late Mrs. W. 
J. Landon — was the only one of the four to 
survive him. Mr. and Mrs. Cone were members 
and regular attendants of the Central Metho- 
dist Episcopal church of Winona, of which 
Mr. Cone served as treasurer for nearly a 
quarter of a century. And apart from the 
duties of this office, his interest and influence 
in the general activities of the church were 
very constant, and his contributions to its 
financial resources bountiful. Mr. Cone was 
for twenty-eight years a widower, the death 
of his wife having occurred on February 8, 
1870. During the last few years of his life 
his health was in a delicate state, and this, 
together with his advancing age, compelled 
him gradually to loosen his hold upon the 
business and social affairs with which he had 
for so long kept closely in touch. Early in 
the spring of 1898 he became an inmate of 
the Sanitorium at Hudson, Wisconsin, in 
which he had formerly spent some time 
as a patient. A few weeks later he 
was attacked by an acute malady, and 
died at the Sanitorium on the 29th of 
April, at the age of seventy-six years. Mr. 
Cone was a man of a deeply religions tempera- 
ment, and although he was never one to 



206 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



obtrude his views upon others, his convictions 
were firmly rooted, and the spirit of true 
Christianity made beautiful his character and 
the deeds and influence emanating from it. To 
his modesty and single-heartedness, absolute 
rectitude in all the relations of life seemed no 
more than the normal state, and nothing for 
which he deserved especial credit; but it was 
deemed otherwise by the many friends he had 
attached to him in Winona, through southern 
Minnesota, and at Hudson, Wisconsin, by 
whom his loss is still deplored. 



HENRY A. YOUNG. 



In every city, and particularly in our 
younger cities of the West, there is a corps of 
progressive workers, undefined in number, 
relied upon by the community, whether con- 
sciously or unconsciously, to keep the munici- 
pal wheels, not merely running smoothly, but 
running continuously on the desired upward 
grade; and just such a citizen of such an 
upward-moving municipality is Henry A. 
Young, of Lake City, Minnesota. Henry 
Albert Young is a native of Germany, born at 
Gailsbach, Wiirtemberg, December 9, 1845. 
He is a son of Frederick and Regina (Kiibler) 
Young, who were farmer folk of Wiirtemberg, 
in moderate circumstances. His father was 
also a baker by trade; but, although carrying 
on two distinct lines of business, he found 
time, and possessed the ability, to participate 
in the public affairs of his community, and at 
one time served as Burgermeister of the vil- 
lage of Gailsbach. Henry A. Young, of this 
biography, came to the United States in 1S03, 
being then a youth of eighteen years. He 
made his way to Minnesota, stopping at the 
town of Read's Landing, where he found em- 
ployment in Bullard's Hotel. A brother of 
our subject — the late C. F. Young — was at 
that time conducting a general store at Read's 
Landing, and upon leaving his position in the 
hotel, Henry A. engaged to assist this brother 
in his business. In 18G5 C. F. transferred the 
entire management of his store to his young 
brother and removed to Lake City; and in the 



following spring Henry A. closed out the 
business at Read's Landing and joined him at 
Lake City, where the two brothers for many 
years operated another store in the same line 
of trade. In 1889, in consequence of the death 
of C. F. Young, the younger brother acquired 
a (nut rolling interest in the business, which 
has since been conducted under the style of 
H. A. Young & Co. But the management 
of this business is with Mr. Young but one of 
many interests. Upon the organization, in 
1898, of the Citizen's Bank, he became presi- 
dent of that institution, and he had previously 
been for some years a director of the Lake 
City Bank. In politics he is a loyal and inter- 
ested member of the Republican party. 
Inning taken a prominent part in several 
of its county conventions; and he has held 
high official positions. But Mr. Young 
is not an office seeker, and his purpose 
in accepting preferment, made evident by 
his whole conduct, has been the service of his 
city and not the gratification of selfish aims 
— a political instance sufficiently rare to be 
worthy of note. Mr. Young served as mayor 
of Lake City in 1892, with re-election in the 
following year, and he has also officiated as 
city treasurer for a term of four years. His 
public and enterprising spirit has found prac- 
tical expression in many material benefits to 
the city, as, for instance, the establishment of 
its waterworks, in 1893, which was largely due 
to his efforts. The electric lights and public 
highway improvements were also, as projects, 
powerfully promoted by his foresight and 
personal activity. During the years of Mr. 
Young's active citizenship. Lake City has en- 
joyed a period of unusual development, and 
it is easy for reflective members of the com- 
munity to trace a connection between the two 
facts. On February 9, 1872, Mr. Young was 
married to Anna L. Schauble, of St. Paul. 
They have two sons: Henry <!., now married 
and a resident of Lake City, and assisting in 
the store, and Albert F. Mr. Young, together 
with his family, attends the Episcopal church 
of Lake City, of which he is treasurer. He 
also belongs to the order of Masons, and is 
an Old Fellow, and Son of Herman. 




The Century Publishing &Cnj/ravtnj Co Chicaptr 



/t^-W^^&^^ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



207 



FRANK H. CARLETON. 

Frank Henry Carleton, of Minneapolis, is a 
member of the well-known law firm of Cross, 
Hicks, Carleton & Cross. He was born Octo- 
ber 8, 184!), at Newport, New Hampshire. 
His ancestry on his father's side was English, 
and the family line is traced back to Sir Guy 
Carlton. On his mother's side his descent is 
also from English stock, going back to Joseph 
French, a leading citizen of Salisbury, Massa- 
chusetts, of a generation prior to the War of 
the Revolution. Frank H. is the son of Henry 
G. Carleton, now and for many years president 
of the Savings Bank of Newport, New Hamp- 
shire. For forty years he was one of the 
editors of the New Hampshire Argus and 
Spectator. He was for many years one of the 
leading Democratic editors of New Hamp- 
shire, and a personal friend of John P. Hale 
and Franklin Pierce. He has now retired from 
active business and is in good financial circum- 
stances. He has served as a member of the 
Legislature of the State of New Hampshire, 
has been register of probate, and has tilled 
other important public positions. The subject 
of this biography was educated in the common 
schools of Newport, and prepared for college 
at Kimball Union Academy, at Meridan, New 
Hampshire, where he graduated in June, 1868. 
He then entered Dartmouth College and there 
completed the course with the class of 1872. 
He took the first prize for English composi- 
tion during the senior year, and wrote the 
class ode for commencement day. During his 
academic and college days he was obliged to 
absent himself at different times, while he 
was engaged as teacher, and, in 1870, he was 
for a time principal of an academy for white 
pupils in Mississippi. Mr. Carleton also varied 
his experience by assuming the duties of city 
editor of the Manchester Daily Union, after 
his graduation from college, which position he 
held for several months. He then decided to 
carry out an early plan to seek a location in 
the West, and accordingly came to Minne- 
apolis, where he was engaged as a reporter 
for the Minneapolis News, then edited by 
George K. Shaw. This position he held for 



several months, at the same time serving as 
Minneapolis correspondent for the St. Paul 
Press. Subsequently he was appointed city 
editor of the St. Paul Daily Press under Mr. 
Wheelock. After a year's service on tin- 
Press, Mr. Carleton determined to carry 
out his original plan of preparing for the prac- 
tice of law, and accordingly commenced his 
study for that purpose in the offce of Cushman 
K. Davis and C. I>. O'Brien. While pursuing 
his studies he served as clerk of the Municipal 
Court of St. Paul, and after holding this posi- 
tion for five years, he resigned, owing In ill- 
health, and took a six-months' trip to Europe. 
<>n his return from Europe he was appointed 
secretary to Gov. John S. Pillsbury, and ren- 
dered important service in connection with 
the settlement of the repudiated Minnesota 
railroad bonds. A complete history of this 
memorable struggle against repudiation, led 
by Governor Pillsbury, is given by Judge Flan 
drau in another part of this book. His position 
as private secretary to Governor Pillsbury 
was not merely a clerical one, as Mr. Carleton 
had the entire confidence of the Governor, who 
was largely dependent upon him for assistance 
all through that memorable fight, to maintain 
the credit and honor of the State. For several 
years he was the Minnesota correspondent of 
the Chicago Inter Ocean and the New York 
Times. In 1882 he removed to Minneapolis 
and formed a law partnership with Judge 
Henry G. Hicks and Capt. Judson N. Cross. 
This firm still exists, the only change being 
the addition of Norton M. Cross, the son of 
Captain Cross. From 1883 to 1887, during 
Captain Cross' three terms as city attorney, 
Mr. Carleton was assistant city attorney of 
Minneapolis. These were formative days in 
the history of the city, and witnessed the in- 
auguration of important litigation in the 
development of Minneapolis. Mr. Carleton had 
practically the entire management of the 
numerous suits in the city courts (many of 
them being appealed to the Supreme Court of 
the State), which were brought to maintain 
the supremacy of the "patrol limits" ordinance. 
The principal was a new and a startling one 
to the lawyers, and for years, Mr. Carleton 



208 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



was confronted by the 1 » -st legal talent in the 
city, in fruitless onsets against its armor, until 
the principal had become a permanent one in 
Minneapolis. Mr. Carleton and the Arm with 
which he is connected lias a large and varied 
practice in real estate law, probate law and 
financial adjustments, in which he has had 
much experience. There is ample testimony to 
his ability in this direction, and the confidence 
reposed in him, by his frequent appointment 
as administrator of large estates, executor of 
wills, and as trustee of funds for individuals 
and institutions. In the drawing of wills he 
is considered an expert. In politics, Mr. Carle- 
ton is a Republican, although not an active 
participator in party affairs, preferring to 
devote his leisure time to scientific research 
and literary pursuits. Mr. Carleton is a Mason, 
a member and one of the trustees of the Park 
Avenue Congregational church, and is one of 
the directors of the Home Mission Society. 
In 1881 he was married to Ellen Jones, the 
only daughter of the late Judge Edwin S. 
Jones, of Minneapolis. They have had six 
children, Edwin Jones, Henry Guy, George 
Pillsbury, Charles Pillsbury, who died in in- 
fancy; Frank H., Jr., and Fred Pillsbury. Mr. 
< Jarleton is a lover of nature, a great cultivator 
of flowers, an enthusiastic fly-fisher, and much 
given to the pursuit of this fascinating sport 
in the celebrated fishing grounds that abound 
in the picturesque regions of northern Minne- 
sota. 



DANIEL BASSETT. 



The name of Bassett is w T ell known to Minne- 
apolis, partly through the public activities of 
the subject of this sketch, even more, perhaps, 
through those of his brother Joel. The native 
place of these brothers is Wolfborough, New 
Eampshire, a quiet town on the shore of the 
beautiful Lake Winnipiseogee, with its tradi- 
tion of an island for each day of the year. 
They were issued from Quaker stock, their 
genealogy being traceable back to the French 
Euguenots, and were reared in accordance 
with the strict yet wholesome precepts of the 



Friends. Their father, also named Daniel, 
owned a farm in Wolfborough, and here his 
family of four sons and two daughters grew 
up. Eventually, however, father and children, 
with a single exception, had all come to make 
their home in Minnesota, where the senior 
Bassett died in 1861. Daniel Bassett junior 
was born in the year 1819, and to the age of 
thirty-six continued a citizen of New Hamp- 
shire. His mature years in his native State 
were devoted, not to farming, but largely to 
financial business in the village of Wolf- 
borough. In 1855 he came to Minneapolis, 
where his brother Joel had then been located 
for four years. For a short time the two 
brothers followed together the lumber indus- 
try. When this was abandoned, Daniel, who 
had acquired some means previous to coming 
West and still retained an influential connec- 
tion with a Wolfborough bank, employed such 
capital as he had, in real estate investments 
and loans. But his abilities and integrity of 
character soon made a demand for his service 
in public functions. In 185S, when the town- 
ship government" was organized, he was elected 
to the board of supervisors, together with D. 
II. Richardson, Isaac I. Lewis and Edward 
Murphy, and R. P. Russell as chairman. To 
this position Mr. Bassett was repeatedly re- 
elected. For three years of the Civil War, he 
served, by appointment of General Hancock, 
as purveyor for the Second army corps, during 
two years of which time, the General and his 
staff remained with Mr. Bassett's men. Upon 
his return from the war, Mr. Bassett was ap- 
pointed postmaster of Minneapolis, but he soon 
resigned because of his disapproval of certain 
schemes of the Johnson administration. In 
politics he has always been a Republican, and 
he has been several times elected to the Leg- 
islature of Minnesota. He served on the 
Public Land committee in the House of Rep- 
resentatives of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth 
Legislatures. Mr. Bassett was among the 

first nibers of (he pari; commission of Minne 

apolis, organized in 1883, and was for several 
years retained in this position, his colleagues 
on the board being Governor Pillsbury. George 
A. Pillsbury, W. S. King, C. M. Loring and 







RTOTYPE, I BIEHSTf ■ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



■ 



Dorilus Morrison. He received appointments 
to various committees, including those on 
finance and improvements, and repeatedly 
served on committees specially chosen to 
soled new sites for park development. Into 
all this work he entered with earnest zeal, 
giving freely of his time and energies; and in 
the care and expenditure of public funds was 
most conscientious and wise. Mr. Bassetl is 
a man of plain and frugal speech, but under 
the stimulus of strong conviction is capable 
even of eloquence, as he once proved in an 
address opposing a project for making a park 
of Nicollet island. On the occasion of the 
Indian outbreak and massacre near Fort 
Ridgely, a hundred citizens, Mr. Bassett one 
of them, volunteered succor to the imperiled 
fort. Joining General Sibley, at St. Peter, 
they marched forty miles in the night, some- 
times stepping over dead bodies, but reached 
the fort in time to rescue three hundred men, 
women and children, who would soon have 
become the victims of savage slaughter. Re- 
appointment of Governor Fillsbury, Mr. Bas- 
sett served for many years as a member of 
the State board of equalization of taxes, and 
while his work has been excellent in all the 
offices he has held, it was particularly credit- 
able in this one, and he was continued in it 
until he requested the Governor to cease re- 
appointing him. Trior to 1880 Mr. Bassett was 
for some time vice-president of the Merchants' 
National Bank of Minneapolis. He has also, 
in past years, done duty on the executive com- 
mittee of the Minneapolis Trust Company. 
Before coming West Mr. Bassett was married 
to Eliza Jane Canney, whose brother, Joseph 
H. Canney, thus became twice the brother-in- 
law of Mr. Bassett, having previously married 
his sister. The two children of Mr. and Mrs. 
Bassett, both daughters, were bom in New 
Hampshire and educated in Minneapolis. One 
of them married F. B. Hill of Chicago; the 
other is Mrs. Tyson Mowry, now of Minne- 
apolis, who formerly lived in Texas, where her 
husband was engaged in business. Mr. Bas- 
sett has retired from the active affairs of life, 
and lives quietly in his substantial residence 
on Hennepin avenue; but through his circle of 



devoted friends he keeps well in touch with 
the life of the city, for the advancement of 
which he has faithfully and effectively labored. 



■WILLIAM WINDOM. 



"This Nation has been served from genera- 
tion to generation by many great and good 
men, and in our assurance of the permanence 
of our institutions and our public prosperity 
it will be so served from generation to genera 
tion in the future. Among them all, William 
Windom will always be a marked and admir- 
able figure, and few will be more secure, in 
the ever-changing minds of men and in ever- 
changing times, from detraction or neglect." 
—Hon. William M. Evarts. 

"The Nation will fondly cherish the recollec- 
tion of his triumphant career and his distin- 
guished services, but the heritage of his fame 
belongs especially to Minnesota. This was the 
State of his adoption, and upon this State, in 
a peculiar sense, did he shed the luster of his 
great achievement. He became a citizen of 
Minnesota in his early and unknown manhood. 
By its people was he sent to the National Con- 
gress for ten successive years; by its Legisla- 
ture was he twice honored with a place in the 
National Senate; as the representative of this 
State he held a most important position in 
the councils of two administrations, and as an 
adopted and honored sou of Minnesota, his love 
and loyalty were warm and constant and true." 
—Hon'. J. W. Tawney. 

To the State Mr. Windom was indebted tor 
unusual opportunities of usefulness. The 
State owes him much for the conspicuous and 
masterly use of those opportunities. William 
Windom was born in Belmont county, Ohio, 
on "the tenth day of the nfth month," lsi'7. 
He was the second and youngest child of 
Hezekiah and Mercy Windom. His ancestors 
were sturdy English Quakers, who came to 
America about two hundred years ago and 
settled in Virginia and Pennsylvania. During 
the minority of his parents, his paternal and 
maternal grandfathers, George Windom and 
Nathan Spencer, removed to Ohio and wire 
among the pioneer farmers of Belmont county. 
The home of Hezekiah and Mercy Windom was 
a humble one, but it was a home of purity and 
peace. The mother always wore the Quaker 



2IO 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



garb, and the children as well as the parents 
used the Quaker forms of speech. After he 
was grown to manhood, and as long as his 
parents lived, Mr. Windom when visiting them, 
or in writing to them, naturally and easily 
resumed the "thee" and "thou" of his child- 
hood. In 1837 the family removed to Knox 
county in the same State. This was thence- 
forth the family home. Here, amid the 
limitations, the hard work, and the wholesome 
economies of pioneer farm life in the Buckeye 
State, William Windom spent the remainder 
of his boyhood and laid the foundations of his 
subsequent character and career. In that early 
day Knox county was far removed from the 
great markets, and although products of the 
farm abounded, lack of any adequate means 
of transportation kept the price of farm prod- 
acts so low that little money came to till the 
family purse. But the poverty of Hezekiah 
Windom was ''the poverty of the frontier, 
which is indeed no poverty; it is but the be- 
ginning of wealth." The lad's early educa- 
tional advantages were only such as the 
country schools of that day afforded, and the 
eager reading of such books as w r ere to be 
found in the small libraries of the neighbor- 
hood. Probably a lawyer had never been seen 
among the peaceable Quakers of Knox county; 
but in books, young Windom had met some 
fascinating representatives of the legal pro- 
fession, and while still a mere lad, had settled 
in his own mind the question of a career. He 
would be a lawyer. To Hezekiah and Mercy 
Windom this was an alarming declaration. 
Their religion had taught them to regard the 
profession of law with peculiar disfavor, and 
hoping to save their son from so worldly and 
iniquitous a calling, they resolved that he 
should learn and follow "a good honest trade." 
But the lad's instincts and ambitions were 
stronger than parental purposes, and the re- 
sult was an academic course at Martinsburg. 
Ohio, followed by a thorough course in law in 
the office of Judge K. C. Hurd of Mount Ver- 
non. In 1850, at the age of twenty-three, Mr. 
Windom was admitted to the bar at Mount 
Vernon, and at once entered upon the practice 
of his profession. As may be supposed, this 



result was not accomplished without great 
effort and self-denial. That Mr. Windom's 
parents finally acquiesced in their son's deci- 
sion is evidenced by the fact that his father 
mortgaged his farm to raise a sum of money 
to assist him while pursuing his studies. This, 
however, was in the form of a loan, and was 
promptly repaid after he had entered upon 
the practice of law. While in the academy, 
Mr. Windom sometimes taught a country 
school three months in the winter, keeping 
abreast of his own' class meanwhile, by devot- 
ing all his evenings to study. His summer 
vacations were spent at home on the farm, 
where he recruited his health and assisted his 
father in the work of the harvest field. Also 
for a time, while studying law in Mount Ver- 
non, he served several hours each day as 
assistant to the postmaster of the town. 
Though never boastful of his success in strug- 
gling with adverse circumstances, Mr. Windom 
regarded this part of his career with no sense 
of shame, but rather with a just and manly 
pride. After two years' practice in Mount 
Vernon, Mr. Windom was elected prosecuting 
attorney for the county by a majority of 300, 
which meant a change of 1,300 votes, a strik- 
ing presage thus early in life of the remarkable 
personal popularity that was always thence- 
forward to attend him. In 1855 the new 
Northwest was attracting the enterprising 
spirits of the Eastern and Central States. Mr. 
Windom felt a desire to identify himself with 
the stirring life of the great region then just 
opening to settlement beyond the upper Missis- 
sippi, in whose future he saw possibilities 
which subsequently were more than realized. 
Closing his office in Mount Vernon, and bidding 
adieu to old friends, he came to Minnesota, 
then a Territory embracing thrice its present 
area, and, after a survey of the field, settled 
in the practice of law at Winona. Here he 
maintained a legal residence until the time of 
his death. Mr. Windom was married on the 
20th of August, 1850, to Ellen Towne, third 
daughter of the Rev. R. C. Hatch. The union 
thus formed was one of unbroken happiness. 
Destiny had evidently marked Mr. Windom 
for a life of public service. In the autumn of 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



21 I 



1858, at the age of thirty-one, he was elected 
as a Republican to the Thirty-sixth Congress, 
and was successively re-elected to serve in the 
Thirty-seventh, Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth and 
Fortieth Congresses, a period of ten years, 
terminating in 1869. In that year he was ap- 
pointed to the United States Senate to fill the 
unexpired term of Hon. I). S. Norton, deceased. 
In 1871 he was elected to the United States 
Senate by the Legislature of Minnesota for the 
usual six years' term, and was re-elected in 
1877. In the National Republican Con vent ion 
of 1880, Mr. Windom's name was presented 
and during twenty-eight ballots was adhered 
to by the delegates from Minnesota, as then- 
candidate for the Presidency. In March, 1881. 
he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury 
in the Cabinet of President Garfield. Retiring 
from the Treasury upon the death of the 
President and the accession of Mr. Arthur in 
the autumn of 1881, Mr. Windom was again 
re-elected to the United States Senate and 
served out tlie term expiring March :'>. 1883, 
making an aggregate of twelve years in that 
body. In January, 1883, Mr. Windom's name 
was again presented to the Legislature, but 
to the surprise of the country, his re-election 
was defeated. The limitation and character 
of this sketch do not permit a discussion of the 
causes which led to this defeat. It is enough 
to say that they were not in derogation of the 
honorable record he had made in his long and 
faithful public service, and that Mr. Windom 
suffered no loss of prestige in his party on this 
account, as was fully shown by subsequent 
events. A happy result of this release from 
exacting duties was an ideal year of foreign 
travel with his family. This was almost the 
first respite from work in Mr. Windom's 
hitherto busy life. After his return from 
Europe, he devoted himself to his private busi- 
ness, which heretofore had claimed too little 
of his attention. From this he was called by 
President Harrison to serve again as Secretary 
of tlie Treasury, the duties of which position 
he reassumed March 4, 1889. Entering the 
House of Representatives in the ardor of his 
youth, and when the rising tide of anti-slavery 
reform was reaching its culmination, Mr. 



Windom threw himself with enthusiasm into 
the conflict of ideas which was soon to result 
in a widespread conflict of arms. Two years 
later, and at the beginning of his second term 
in Congress, the war for the Union opened. 
and from that time until its victorious close, 
Mr. Windom, though among the youngest of 
the men then in the arena of National politics. 
helped to render the war period memorable 
in civic, as it was in martial affairs. Dur- 
ing his long service in the Senate, Mr. 
Windom was actively identified with many 
leading measures of legislation. From lsTti 
until he resigned his seat to take the portfolio 
of the Treasury, in 1881, he occupied the 
arduous and responsible post of chairman of 
the Committee on Appropriations, a position 
that, amid the legislative complications then 
existing, involved herculean labors, all of 
which were patiently and successfully per- 
formed. When he re-entered the Senate after 
the death of President Garfield, he became 
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions. Shortly after 1870 began the agitation 
in respect to inland transportation. So wide 
spread, especially among farmers, was the 
demand for improved facilities for reaching 
the markets of the world, that Congress was 
constrained to consider the problem in all its 
bearings. The Senate appointed a special com- 
mittee on transportation routes to the sea 
hoard, of which Mr. Windom was made 
chairman. After very diligent study of the 
subject, during which, accompanied by several 
members of the committee, he visited the chief 
commercial centers of the Union, .Mr. Windom 
wrote in 1874 a report of the committee's in- 
vestigations and conclusions, which was pub 
lished in two volumes by order of Congress. 
This report was a pioneer publication in the 
field which it covered, and has proved Id he 
an invaluable magazine of carefully digested 
fads, and just deductions, which have con 
tributed not a little to shape the legislation of 
Congress and various State legislatures affect- 
ing the carrying trade of the country. In the 
United States Senate, twelve years after the 
report in question was laid before Congress 
and the country, Mr. Hoar, of Massachusetts. 



212 



I'KMJKAIMIV OF MINNESOTA. 



in debating ;i resolution proyiding for a con- 
tinuance of similar investigations, said: 

"I think Senators who have attended to the 
subject will agree generally that the most val- 
uable Stale paper of modern times by this 
country is the report made by the late Senator 
and Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Windom, 
from the committee on transportation routes to 
the seaboard on the general question of the 
relation of the railroads to the commerce of 
the country, and the means of controlling the 
railroads in the interests of commerce. That 
most instructive, valuable and profound report 
brings the subject down to the year 187.'?." — 
Congressional Record, March 18, 1885. 

One of the direct results of this investigation 
and report was the deepening of the mouth of 
the Mississippi river, a work of incomparable 
importance to the South and West. When Mr. 
Windom took up this work, the relation be- 
tween land and water routes was wholly 
misunderstood, and the ueed of the latter gen- 
erally denied. His labors transformed the 
opinion of that small class which studies these 
questions, and gradually leavened public opin- 
ion, lie gathered facts and laid down 
principles, which have profoundly affected the 
construction of public works and legislation 
on continental traffic, and thus accomplished 
a most beneficent work in reforming and de- 
veloping the interior commerce of the country. 
Tt is interesting to trace the connection be- 
tween Mr. Windom's zeal in this undertaking 
and the lessons learned in boyhood on his 
father's farm, where such commodities as milk, 
cream, eggs and potatoes, were freely given 
away, because, owing to the distance from 
market, they possessed no commercial value. 
Mr. Windom brought to every task his full 
i nergy, and all the knowledge it was possible 
to obtain. Whatever problem presented itself, 
he grappled with it earnestly, and was not con 
tent until he hail mastered il. Thus he wrung 
success from situations which to many another 
would have yielded only failure. "In his brief 
term of service under President Garfield, Mi'. 
Windom accomplished one of the most valu- 
able and brilliant achievements in our financial 
history, by his conversion of the public debt 
at tin' unprecedented rate of interest of three 



and a half per cent." The situation which 
confronted Mr. Windom when he took the port- 
folio of the Treasury, in March, 1881, is thus 
explained by Gen. A. It. Nettleton: 

"The Congress which adjourned March 3, 
1881, had failed to provide for the great 
volume of maturing bonds, which consisted of 
$196,378,600 six per cents and $439,811,250 five 
per cents, a total of $636,189,850, redeemable 
on or before July 1. 1881. For three several 
reasons it was very important that the failure 
of ('ongress to make provision for this great 
volume of maturing bonds should not result 
in their remaining outstanding at the old rate 
of interest: First, it would have been a cum- 
brous, difficult, and expensive task to continue 
paying interest on scores of millions of coupon 
bonds from which all coupons had been re- 
moved. Second, it would have been a distinct 
and serious injury to the public credit, if the 
Government had permitted more than six 
hundred millions of dollars of its debt to pass 
the maturity date without protection, and then 
continue to draw rates of interest which had 
by that time become exorbitant for a nation 
in the known financial condition of the United 
States. Third, the actual money loss involved 
in continuing to pay five and six per cent per 
annum on such an amount of debt, as com 
pared with the three and a half per cent per 
annum at which Secretary Windom believed it 
should be floated, would be at the rate of more 
than eleven million dollars per annum. With 
this threefold stimulus, the Secretary devoted 
himself to the task of devising some method 
which, without involving a violation of law. 
should virtually take the place of that legisla- 
tion which Congress had failed to enact. After 
careful study of the situation, he matured and 
put in execution a plan whereby the bulk of 
the maturing bonds were continued at the 
pleasure of the government to bear interest at 
the rate of three and a half per cent per an- 
num, and the residue redeemed at maturity." 

For this achievement in governmental finance 
there was no precedent, and the announce- 
ment of the Secretary's purpose was met with 
almost universal incredulity. The total cost 
of the process of thus converting government 
loans aggregating more than $600,000,000 
bearing five and six per cent interest, into a 
uniform three and a half per cent loan running 
at the pleasure of the government, was less 
than $2,000, and no money whatever was taken 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



213 



even temporarily from the channels of business 
in America or Europe. The general estimate 
placed upon the accomplishment of this under- 
taking, after it had become history, was all 
that Mr. Windom's most ardent admirer could 
desire. "Quietly and successfully the change 
was made. There was no flourish of trumpets, 
but no finer achievement is recorded in the 
history of American financiering." — Hon. 
Thomas P. P.ayard. The press of the country 
was absolutely without stint in its praise. The 
New York Tribune summed up by saying, 
"This operation will rank as the greatest and 
most creditable financial triumph in history." 
Thus was Mr. Windom's reputation as a 
financier enhanced at home and established 
abroad. His ability to administer the Treasury 
Department wisely with reference to the 
needs of a great commercial Nation having 
been tested to the utmost, his selection by 
President Harrison to again become the head 
of that most important department, was wel- 
comed by the business community as a guar- 
anty that the interests of the Nation would 
be wisely and courageously guarded. That it 
was not disappointed in this expectation is 
shown by his timely, sagacious and courageous 
use of the treasury resources during the clos- 
ing months of 1800. "The Secretary's grasp 
of the situation seemed perfect, and his 
prompt, decisive, though conservative mens 
ures, in the face of impending paralysis of all 
business and every industry, restored public 
confidence and averted National, if not inter- 
national disaster." The official duties of the 
Secretary, always very exacting, were greatly 
augmented during the winter of 1890-1891, 
when questions of momentous importance en- 
grossed the public mind and the attention of 
Congress was largely devoted to a discussion 
and formulation of financial measures. "Put so 
loyal to duty was he. that, regardless of known 
peril to life, he worked on, meanwhile refusing 
most flattering and tempting offers to return 
to private life and business." The necessity 
for husbanding his strength, generally forbade 
his attendance upon public entertainments. 
When, however, he received an invitation from 
the Board of Trade and Transportation of New 



York to attend their annual banquet, making 
its convenience secondary to his, and cour- 
teously allowing him to name the date, 
he at once accepted, naming January 29. 
In reply to some expressions of solicitude lest 
this additional tax upon his time and strength 
might prove too exhausting, Mr. Windom said 
that the occasion would place him among 
friends with whom in former years he had 
labored in a common cause, and furnish an 
opportunity which he was unwilling to forego 
to urge measures which he considered to be of 
great importance to the country. Thus it will 
lie seen that in responding to this call. Mr. 
Windom accepted, not simply an invitation to 
a banquet, but a summons to the discharge of 
a duty as distinctly patriotic as any ever laid 
upon a public-spirited citizen of the Republic. 
The world knows the sequel! He fell at 
the post of duty as truly as does a- soldier on 
the field of battle. The scene was a brilliant 
one. Art and wealth had combined to make 
the surroundings beautiful. The assembly con- 
sisted of representative men from all parts of 
the country and leading business men of New 
York, and the interest of all was whetted by 
anticipations of the evening. After an hour 
of social intercourse, the banquet was served, 
and then the toastmaster of the evening — 
Judge Arnoux — introduced as "chiefest among 
this brilliant galaxy of guests, the Hon. Secre- 
tary of the Treasury." Mr. Windom had 
chosen for his subject "Our Country's Pros 
perity Dependent Upon Its Instruments of 
Commerce." Of the address itself little need 
he said. So competent a judge as Senator 
Hoar, of Massachusetts — after alluding to 
Mr. Windom's report on transcontinental 
transportation, which he characterized as "one 
of the very foremosf of our stale papers," said: 
"If it were desired to preserve for future use 
and study the best specimens of the political 
discussion of our day, this report — and the 
powerful speecb Mr. Windom made just before 
his death — would have no superiors and few- 
equals for that purpose." Mr. Windom spoke 
forty three minutes and closed amid bewilder 
in«' applause. He rose and courteously bowed 
his acknowledgments — and then, in a moment 



214 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



of time and while the applause was still ring- 
ing in his cars, without a struggle or conscious 
ness of failing strength or any pain of parting 
from those he held most dear, "he passed 
beyond earth's vexed problems, into the peace 
and joy of immortality." The sorrow that was 
everywhere manifest so soon as the story of 
the Secretary's death became known, and the 
universally favorable comment upon the char- 
acter and career of Mr. Windom by the people 
and the press of the whole country, without 
regard to political preferences, serves forcibly 
to illustrate the fact that there was in his life 
and work, that which was above and beyond 
the zone of partisan interests, and which 
commanded the esteem and admiration of the 
wisest and best of his countrymen of every 
party name. To all who knew Mr. Windom 
familiarly, or who had come within the atmos- 
phere of his rare personality, any estimate of 
his character and career would seem purposely 
deficient which should omit reference to his 
strongly religious nature. In early manhood 
he publicly professed his faith in Christ, and 
throughout a lifetime of strenuous activity and 
conflict, covering a period of political agitation 
and tempest scarcely equaled in the history of 
men, he not only "bore the white flower of a 
blameless life," but maintained that inward 
spiritual calm which conies alone to him whose 
soul is anchored in an intelligent Christian 
faith. His pure and reverent life, in the midst 
of masculine activities and political struggle, 
is an object-lesson to the young which cannot 
be too widely studied, lie always dared to do 
the thing he saw to be right; he always be- 
lieved that in the end the right thing would 
secure the indorsement of the country that he 
loved. With a sweetness of spirit which never 
wearied, there was allied in him a quiet firm- 
ness which none could misunderstand, and 
which revealed the rounded strength of a great 
character. Singularly devoted to his friends 
and ever thoughtful of their interests, he nei- 
ther wasted his time nor embittered his genial 
nature by resentful thoughts of his enemies. 
Mr. Windom is survived by his wife and 
three children — one son. William Douglas, and 
two daughters, Ellen Hatch and Florence 



Bronson — the former being the wife of Bentley 
Wirt Warren of I'.oston. The felicities of do- 
mestic life were his in an unusual degree. All 
who came within the sphere of his influence 
felt the charm of his personality, but nowhere 
did the combined sweetness and strength of 
.Mr. Windom's nature make itself felt as in his 
own home. No shadow ever fell across its 
threshold, until that fatal night when its light 
was so suddenly extinguished. 



LUCIUS F. HUBBARD. 

Gen. Lucius Frederick Hubbard, of Bed 
Wing, Minnesota, represents two prominent 
Eastern families — the Hubbards of New Eng- 
land and Van Valkenbergs of New York, ne is 
of English and Dutch extraction, his earliest 
American ancestors on the paternal side hav- 
ing been George and Mary (Bishop) Hubbard, 
who came over from England in the Seven- 
teenth Century, while his remote maternal an- 
cestors — the Van Valkenbergs and Van Cotts 
of Holland — joined a colony in the valley of 
the Hudson in the days of its early history and 
have ever since been one of the foremost fami- 
lies of that locality. Lucius F. Hubbard is the 
eldest son of Charles F. and Margaret (Van 
Valkenberg) Hubbard, and was bora in Troy, 
New York, January 26, 1830. His father hav- 
ing died when he was but three years of age, 
he was placed under the care of a relative at 
Chester, Vermont, where his childhood was 
passed, and in whose schools he obtained an 
elementary education. At the age of twelve 
years he was sent to the academy at Gran- 
ville, New York, where he took a three years' 
course of instruction. At fifteen hi' returned 
to Vermont and became an apprentice in th" 
tinner's trade at Poultney. His apprenticeship 
was completed in 1854, at Salem, New York, 
to which place he had removed in is.")::. At 
eighteen he went to Chicago, where for three 
years he was employed at his trade, then, in 
the summer of 1857, he came to Red Wing, 
Minnesota, where lie has since made his home. 
II<- had not looked upon his education as com- 
pleted when he left the academy at Granville; 




The fcntu/y PuMtshay &Diym\'iiu/ Co C/iLcaytr 




<a-^S<? 



IUOCKAITIY OF MINNESOTA. 



■15 



indeed, he had regarded his school training 
as but a theoretic basis upon which he pro- 
ceeded to construct a broad practical educa- 
tion by means of systematic reading and re- 
search in leisure hours. Accordingly, when he 
came to Minnesota, although but twenty-one 
years of age, he had arrived at the point where 
he could lav aside the tools of the artisan and 
work with the more subtle implements of the 
intellect. His first business venture was the 
publication of a newspaper — the Rod Wing 
Republican — which lie established and, al- 
though without previous journalistic expe- 
rience, conducted successfully from the start. 
The Republican was the second paper in Good 
hue county, and through that organ Mr. 
Hubbard became known and so popular that 
in 1858 he was chosen register of deeds for the 
county. In the State campaign of 1861 the 
Republicans nominated him as candidate for 
the Senate, but failed to secure his election. 
By this time, however, the Civil War was in 
progress, and Mr. Hubbard was prompt to re- 
spond to his country's call for defenders. He 
sold his newspaper in December and imme- 
diately enlisted as a private in Company A. 
of I lie Fifth Minnesota Infantry. On February 
5, 1862, he was commissioned captain of Com- 
pany A. and on the 20th of March following, 
when the regiment was organized, was pro- 
moted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 
May the regiment was divided, three of its 
companies being ordered to the frontier of 
Minnesota, while the remaining seven were 
sent Smith to join the Second Division. Army 
of the Mississippi. The first battle in which 
Colonel Hubbard was engaged was that of 
Farmington, Mississippi, on the 28th of May. 
Afterwards, in the first battle of Corinth, he 
was wounded quite severely, not, however, so 
as to disable him for further service. In Au- 
gust, 1N02, he was advanced to the full rank 
of colonel. In command of his regimenl lie 
was engaged in a number of importani battles 
and participated in the siege of Vicksburg. 
After the fall of that stronghold Colonel Hub 
hard was given command of the Second Bri- 
gade, First Division. Sixteenth Army Corps, 
which lie led through numerous conflicts. At 



the fierce battle of Nashville. December 15 
and l(i. lsr.4, the brigade suffered heavy losses. 
Colonel Hubbard had two or three horses shot 
under him and was himself wounded; but so 
brave and efficient was his conduct throughout 
the struggle that he was brevetted brigadier 
general "for conspicuous gallantly." During 
the battle the Second Brigade augmented the 
honor which it had already won under its able 
commander, by capturing several pieces of ar- 
tillery and stands of colors, and taking prison- 
ers far exceeding in number the brigade itself. 
General Hubbard's subsequent operations were 
for the most part in the vicinity of New Or- 
leans and Mobile. The total number of battles 
and minor engagements in which he partici- 
pated during the war exceeded thirty, and his 
military record is one to which the State of 
Minnesota may well point with pride. Late 
in 1865 he was mustered out of service and 
returned to his home in Red Wing. His health 
had been badly shattered by the strain and 
privations of army life and he was compelled 
to afford himself a season of rest. In 1800, 
however, he became engaged in the grain and 
milling business, and gradually increased the 
scale of his operations until it dominated that 
interest on several lines of railroad. Mr. Hub 
bard's political tenets have been always Re- 
publican. He represents Minnesota in the 
National Committee of that party, and in offi- 
cial life has rendered valuable service to his 
constituency and his State. In 1868 the Sec- 
ond District of Minnesota nominated him for 
Congress, but he declined to 11111 because of a 
question which arose concerning the genuine- 
ness of the nomination. In 1S72 he was elected 
to the State Senate, and re-elected two years 
later; but in 1876 he declined a second re-elec- 
tion. During (he last-named year he became 
interested in railroad const ruction. His first 
enterprise in that line was the completion of 
the Midland Railway from Wabasha to Zum- 
brota. This railroad, which was sold to the 
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, led to 
the building and operating of a rival line by 
the Chicago iV; Northwestern Railway. Mr. 
Hubbard subsequently successfully projected 
two other lines, viz.: (he Minnesota Central 



2l6 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



Railway, connecting Red Wing and Mankato, 
and the Duluth, Red Wing & Southern Rail- 
road, of which latter road he is at present 
manager. In 1881 Mr. Hubbard was elected 
Governor of Minnesota by a majority of 27,857 
votes, which was a1 that time the largest ever 
received by any candidate for the office. Be 
was re-elected in 1883, and throughout his in- 
cumbency of five years he administered the 
Stale affairs with marked efficiency, especially 
in the management of ils finances. The rale of 
taxation was materially reduced. alsi> the pub- 
lic debt, while the trust funds were increased 
by nearly three millions. Many important 
measures were carried into effect at Governor 
Hubbard's recommendation, among which 
were the following: The establishment of the 
State Board of Charities and Corrections; the 
Slate Public School at Owatonna; State in- 
spection of dairy products, and the present 
sanitary organization for protecting public 
health; the creation of the exist inn railway 
aud warehouse commission; the present sys- 
tem of grain inspection; the organization of 
a State National Guard; the change from an- 
nual to biennial elections. Governor Hubbard 
has also served on numerous weighty State 
commissions. In 18G6 he was a member of 
the commission appointed by the Governor to 
ascertain the status of I lie Slate railroad bonds 
and the terms on which they would be surren- 
dered by holders; in 1S74. a member of the 
commission appointed by the Legislature to 
investigate the accounts of State auditor and 
treasurer; in 1879, on the commission, simi- 
larly appointed, for (lie arbitration of differ- 
ences between Hie State and State prison 
contractors, and in 1889, on that appointed to 
compile ami publish a history of the military 
organizations of Minnesota in the Civil and 
Indian wars of 1861-65. In the Spanish-Amer- 
ican war Governor Hubbard received I lie 
appointment of brigadier general. United 
States Volunteers, anil served in command of 
the Third Division. Seventh Army Corps. Goa 
ernor Hubbard is a member of several mil 
itary and social organizations, as follows: 
Acker Tost. (I. A. R., of St Paul, Tom 
manderv of ihe Loyal Legion, Minnesota 



Society of Sons of the American Rev- 
olution, Society of the Army of the Ten- 
nessee, Society of Foreign Wars, Society 
of American Wars, and Bed Wing Comman- 
dery of Royal Arch Masons. Governor Huh 
bard is a man of family, having, in May. 1868, 
been united in marriage, at lied Wing, to .Mis; 
Amelia Thomas, daughter of Charles Thomas 
and a lineal descendant of Sir John Moore. 
Governor and .Mrs. Hubbard are the parents 
of two sons — Charles P. and Lucius Y. — and 
a daughter — Julia M. Many are Ihe testi- 
monials to the courage and high moral worth 
of Governor Hubbard which might be quoted 
from army comrades and official and business 
associates to swell the volume of this sketch, 
were not those traits of his character already 
sufficiently obvious in the simple record of his 
deeds. His has been a life of varied expe- 
rience; a life full of activity and marked by 
many triumphs and some defeats, through all 
of which he lias borne himself with modest 
dienitv and an integrity without blemish. 



CHRISTOPHER C. ANDREWS. 

Gen. Christopher ( '. Andrews, soldier and 
publicist, was born at the Upper Village of 
Hillsborough, New Hampshire, October '11, 
1829. His ancestors were among the early set- 
tlers of Massachusetts. His paternal great- 
grandfather, Ammi Andrews, was a lieutenant 
in the American army in the battle of Bunker 
Hill. His maternal grandfather, Elijah Beard, 
was a member of the New Hampshire Legisla- 
ture al the time of his death. Gen. Andrews' 
parents were Luther and Xabby (Beard) An- 
drews, lie was the youngest of four children 
and was reared to the age of fourteen on his 
father's thirty-acre fat m. In May, 1843, he 
went lo Boston and worked in his brother's 
provision store, receiving eight dollars a month 
and his hoard, for his services. He was present 
al the dedication of the Bunker Hill monu- 
ment, in -111111', 1843, when Daniel Webster de- 
livered one of his famous oral ions, and in (he 
Presidential campaign of 1st I he listened to 




^^ 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



21 7 



i lie address of John Quincy Adams before the 
Clay Club in Boston. After attending two 
terms at the Francestown (New Hampshire) 
Academy in 1844 he returned to work in the 
same store in Boston, and after another term 
at the Prancestown Academy in the fall of 
1846 he, the following winter, taught one term 
of a district school for eleven dollars a month 
and board. He was admitted to the Massa 
chusetts bar in 1850 and began practice at 
Newton, Lower Falls. He was elected and 
served on the superintending school commit- 
tee of Newton. In is."):; he opened an office in 
Boston. The great orators of that period, Web- 
ster, Choate, Everett, Phillips, Sumner, he 
often heard in and out of Faneuil Hall. 
In June, 1854, he went to the then Territory 
of Kansas, which became the scene of great 
excitement and turbulence over the question 
of slavery. He wrote letters to the Boston 
Post and other Eastern papers commending 
the resources of Kansas which were widely 
copied. Although he had been opposed to the 
Kansas-Nebraska act, yet it having become a 
law, he upheld its execution under the express 
provision that the introduction or exclusion of 
slavery was for the bona-fi.de citizens of the 
Territory to del ermine. In July following his 
arrival, in a public speech at Salt Creek, near 
Fort Leavenworth, he declared his preference 
that Kansas should become a free State. In 
this speech Mr. Andrews said: "I have always 
been an outspoken upholder of the compro- 
mises of the Constitution; but I am not a 
Northern man with Southern principles. I am 
opposed to the extension of slavery and shall 
vote to make Kansas a free State." Lieut. R. 
O Drum (afterwards Adjutant General of the 
Army), who was present, said to him after his 
speech: "You have to-day done the best thing 
you ever did." His was the first Free State 
speech ever made in Kansas. ( rovernor Reeder 
tendered him the position of private secretary, 
which he declined, and in November he went 
to Washington, intending to stay only during 
the short session of Congress; but a severe 
illness of typhoid fever, contracted in Kansas, 
reduced his finances and changed his plans. 
After he got up from his sickness, through the 



influence of President Pierce, his former towns 
man, he was appointed to a $1,400 clerkship in 
the Third Auditor's office and transferred to 
the office of Solicitor of the Treasury to suc- 
ceed Mr. Hamer of Ohio, who resigned volun- 
tarily. He entered upon his duties March, 
1855, and served till May, 1857, when he 
voluntarily resigned and settled at St. Cloud, 
Minnesota, in the practice of law. In 1850 he 
was elected as a Democrat to the State Senate 
for a term of two years. In 1SG0 he was a 
candidate for Presidential Elector on the 
Douglas Democratic ticket, and held about 
thirty joint discussions in various parts of the 
Slate with Mr. Stephen Miller, afterwards Gov- 
ernor. In the spring of 1861, at a war meeting 
at St. Cloud, he made an address and inscribed 
his name as a volunteer. He was nominated 
by a "Union" convention for Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor, but the ticket was soon withdrawn and 
the Union party was absorbed by the Repub- 
lican. For a time he edited the "Minnesota 
Union," which heartily supported Lincoln's 
administration in the prosecution of the war. 
General Andrews will always, perhaps, be 
most prominently known for his military rec- 
ord during the War of the Rebellion. There 
is not space here for this record in full, nor 
even for a proper epitome. His six months' 
residence at Fort Leavenworth gave him many 
ideas of military discipline; and the better 
to tit himself for the military service he spent 
a week at Fort Ripley, Minnesota, in the spring 
of 1861, practicing the manual of arms and 
witnessing drills under Capt. N. H. Davis of 
the regular army. He was mustered as a pri- 
vate October 11, 1801, in Company I, Third 
Regiment Minnesota Infantry, which he helped 
to recruit; appointed captain of the same com 
pany the following November; promoted to 
lieutenant colonel of the Third Regiment in 
December, 1862; colonel in August, 1863; brig- 
adier general January 4. 1804; also commis 
sioned, by President Lincoln, major general by 
brevet March 9, 1865. He was with his regi- 
ment in nearly all of its movements and oper- 
ations while he was connected with it, and the 
records of the War Department show that dur 
ing the whole term of his service, except while 



2l8 



EIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



lie was a prisoner of war, he was not off duty 
on any account more than ten days in all. 
At Murfreesboro, Tennessee, July 13, 1862, 
he very earnestly opposed the surrender of llie 
Third Minnesota to the Confederate General, 
Forrest. The next three months he spent in 
tlie Confederate prison at Madison. Georgia; 
was paroled at Libby prison, Richmond; and 
exchanged in November. On the reorganiza- 
tion of his regiment, in December, 1862, he was 
appointed its lieutenant colonel. While with 
the regimenl before Vicksburg he was made 
colonel. In August and September, isii::, he 
commanded the regiment on General Steele's 
campaign in Arkansas which resulted in the 
capture of Little Rock; and was appointed by 
General Steele commander of the post of Little 
Rock, and served till the latter part of April. 
He received a vote of thanks from the Arkan- 
sas Free Slate Constitutional Convention. On 
the 1st of April, 1864, before his commission 
as brigadier had reached him. he commanded 
the Union force of about L'Oil men, mostly of 
the Third Minnesota, in an action against 600 
Confederates under Gen. 1>. McRea, near Au- 
gusta, Arkansas, which engagement is known 
as the battle of Fitzhugh's Woods. His com- 
mand was well nigh surrounded by the enemy, 
but was well handled, behaved superbly and 
fought its way through. The result of the 
action was determined by a charge led 1>\ 
Colonel Andrews. The Confederates were 
forced to retire, and their loss was three times 
as greal as that of the Union force. In this 
engagement Colonel Andrews had his horse 
killed under him. A few weeks later he led 
another expedition into the country about Au- 
gusta and captured several prisoners. lie 
served seventeen months in Arkansas. After 
receiving his commission as brigadier he 
started with a column for Camden. May lil, 
1.864, assigned to the command of the Second 
Brigade, Second Division, Seventh Army 
Corps, with headquarters at Little Rock. A 
month later he succeeded to the command of 
the division. He was in command of the post 
and district at Devall's Bluff— General Steele's 
base of supplies — from July until in January, 
1865, during which lime his troops made many 



successful scouts; also defeated (ien. doe Shel- 
by in the battle of the Prairies. January :'., 1865, 
al Morganzia, Louisiana, he took command 
of nine regiments undergoing reorganization. 
In March following he assumed command of 
the Second Division of the Thirteenth Army 
Corps, which he commanded in the Mobile 
campaign. His division of over 5,000 veterans 
of the Western Siaies. on April 9th, partici- 
pated in the assault on Fort Blakeley, near 
Mobile, storming the enemy's works, capturing 
1,400 prisoners, twelve pieces of artillery, etc.. 
and losing thirty killed and 20(1 wounded, lie 
was in command at Selma, Alabama, from 
April 27 to .May 12, and of the district of 
Mobile from the latter date until July 4, when 
he was sent to Texas. The policy, whether wise 
or not, Inning been adopted of assigning to dis 
trict commands in the South only officers of 
the regular army, he was,Augus1 14, following, 
relieved from duty as commander of the mili- 
tary district of Houston, Texas, by Major Gen- 
eral Mower, and a few days later, under a gen- 
eral, order of the War Department, proceeded 
lo his home at St. Cloud. He was mustered 
out of the service, to take effect January 15, 
1866. Although not an original Abolitionist, 
General Andrews was never a pro slavery man. 
When the War of the Rebellion came he was 
in favor of the abolition of slavery and favored 
every measure of the administration of Presi- 
dent Lincoln toward that end. In a speech at 
Lil tie Rock in November. 1863, he said he 
was heartily glad to see slavery expiring, add 
in;;: "II must and will go under." He advo- 
cated enlisting the negroes as soldiers, al- 
though many oilier Union officers were op- 
posed to this feature of the administration's 
war policy. As a War Democrat he voted for 
Lincoln in 1864. On account of the position 
taken by the Democratic party on re-construc- 
tion and its treatment of the freedmen after 
i he war he supported the Republican policy 
and advocated negro suffrage as a means of 
protection to the freedmen. lie opposed the in- 
flation of the currency and upheld the National 
credit in speeches in successive campaigns. In 
1868 he was a delegate to the Republican Na 
lional Convention al Chicago, when Grant and 







A 






BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



219 



Colfax were nominated. Later in the same 
year he received the regular Republican nomi- 
nal ion for Congress in his district. Hon. 
Ignatius Donnelly — classified in Horace Gree- 
ley's Tribune Almanac as the "irregular" Re- 
publican candidate — was in the field, and, the 
vote being divided, Hon. Eugene M. ^Vilson of 
.Minneapolis, the Democratic candidate, was 
elected. As the representative of the regular 
organization and of proper methods in politics, 
General Andrews should have received the full 
support of his party. However, although the 
campaign was short, he received 8,598 votes 
and a majority of the Republican votes in sev- 
enteen out of twenty four Republican counties 
in the district. In May, 18(59, he was appointed, 
by President Grant, Minister to Copenhagen; 
but in July was transferred to Stockholm, 
where he served eight years and a half. Re- 
turning to Minnesota, he took up his residence 
in St. Paul, May, 1878. As the official repre- 
sentative of our country at the court of Sweden 
and Norway, his service was most valuable. 
On the part of the United States he concluded 
a treaty for the reduction of postage between 
the countries, and his numerous and elaborate 
reports on a variety of important subjects are 
yet consulted and regarded as authorities. 
His reports on the production of iron, on edu- 
cation, forestry, agriculture, finance, labor and 
wages, civil service, etc., were published by the 
Department of State. General Andrews has 
been a writer for the public press since early 
manhood. For several years he made the re- 
sources of Minnesota known to the Eastern 
public as correspondent of the Boston Post 
and of the New York Evening Tost. In 1880 
he engaged in journalism as principal owner 
and editor of the St. Paul Dispatch. He pre- 
sided over that paper for one year and during 
this time Garfield was elected President, the 
sett lenient of the Minnesota Railroad bonds 
question was effected, and the St. Paul high 
school was built. All of these he strongly ad- 
vocated. He sacrificed $10,000 in his newspa- 
per venture, but gave the Dispatch a reputation 
fully equal to that amount. In 1882 General 
Andrews was appointed, by President Arthur, 
Consul General for the United States at Rio de 



Janeiro, Brazil, and served until in 1885, when 
he was recalled by President Cleveland. In 
1895, under the Forest Preservation Act, lie 
was appointed Chief Fire Warden of Minne- 
sota, which office lie still holds. In 1899 he 
was made Secretary of the Minnesota State 
Forestry Board, in which position he serves 
without salary. He was influential in the es- 
tablishment anil location of the State Soldiers' 
Home. General Andrews has done a great deal 
of valuable literary work. Among other notable 
contributions of his to American literature, it 
may be stated that he was the author of the 
article on Cuba in the Atlantic Monthly for 
July, 1879; of the volume entitled: "Brazil; 
Its Condition and Prospects" (D. Apx»leton & 
Co., 1889); of a pamphlel entitled: "Adminis- 
trative Reform" (two editions, in 1877-88); 
of Minnesota and Dakota, Digest of Opinions 
of Attorneys General, Treatise on the Revenue 
Laws, Campaign of .Mobile, etc., of a series of 
papers on agriculture in Minnesota, published 
in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1894; of a 
special report on wheat culture in the North- 
west, published in 1882 by the U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture, etc. He was the 
projector and editor of the invaluable military 
records, the two volumes entitled: "Minne- 
sota in the Civil and Indian "Wars." His four 
annual reports as Chief Fire Warden, which 
treat mainly of Minnesota's forestry interests. 
have been favorably received. He is an earnest 
Republican in full accord with the declared 
principles of his parly. Hi' favors the gold 
standard, and his influence has always been 
exerted for sound money. General Andrews 
was married, December, 1868, to Miss Mary 
Frances Baxter, of Central City, Colorado (de- 
ceased 1893). In all his twelve years of official 
service abroad, this most estimable lady was 
his companion and helpmate. His daughter 
resides with him in St. Paul. 



FRANK H. PEAVEY. 



Among the names which stand most sig- 
nificantly for the industrial and social prog- 
ress, not only of the State which enrolls them 



220 



BIOGRAPHY (»F MINNESOTA. 



as citizens, but of the whole great Northwest, 
is that of Frank Hutchison Peavey. He is 
a native of Maine, born in the city of Eastport, 
on the 18th of January, 1850. His paternal 
grandfather was Gen. Charles Peavey (a na- 
tive of New Hampshire), who was prominent 
in the military a Hairs of the State of Maine 
and one of the leading merchants and lumber 
manufacturers of the State, located at Fast 
port, lie was highly esteemed for his ability 
and force of character. During the war of 
1812, Eastport was captured by the British 
forces, and General Peavey removed his 
family to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where 
some of his children were born. Albert D. 
Peavey, the father of Frank H., was born am! 
reared in Eastport, Maine, and when arriving 
at the age of maturity, became associated 
with his father in the very prominent mercan- 
tile and lumber firm of Peavey & Son. Ib- 
died in 1859, when our subject was but nine 
years of age, leaving also a widow and two 
younger children. The maiden name of Mrs. 
Peavey, the mother of Frank H., was Mary 
Drew, a daughter of Daniel Drew, a success 
ful merchant of Eastport and a man of vigor- 
ous mind and body. Mrs. Peavey is still 
living, in the beautiful home built for her by 
her devoted son, at Sioux City, Iowa, where 
she is highly esteemed for her bright mind, 
force of character and many womanly graces. 
The five or six years following his father's 
death were uneventful ones to Frank H. He 
attended the common schools of Eastport, 
studied well and played heartily, being blessed 
with excellent health and spirits. Nothing in 
the external circumstances of his life distin- 
guished him essentially from the boys with 
whom he mingled or pointed to a remarkable 
career for him; but there was an internal cir- 
cumstance of inherited ambition and persever- 
ance, working like leaven in the uniformed 
character. His father's death had curtailed 
the opportunities which would otherwise have 
been open to him in his native city, at the 
same time creating in him an early sense of 
responsibility as the male head of the family, 
and the expanding energy within him yearned 
for the roomy region of the West. In April, 



tsd.'i, at the age of fifteen, he set out for the 
Eldorado of his dreams, arriving in due time 
in Chicago, where he soon secured employ- 
ment as messenger boy in the Traders National 
Bank. He subsequently obtained the position 
of bookkeeper in the Northwestern National 
Bank, which he retained until compelled by 
illness to return to his native city for recupera- 
tion. Within a year he decided upon a move 
which later events proved to have been a 
most wise and fortunate one. Returning to 
Chicago he secured a position as head book- 
keeper in the large general store of II. D. 
Booge & Company, at Sioux City, Iowa; and 
before attaining his majority he became a 
partner in the agricultural implement house 
of Booge, Smith & Peavey. which was suc- 
ceeded by the firm of Evans & Peavey, and 
in due time developed into the wholesale 
hardware house of Peavey Brothers. To their 
implement business Evans & Peavey added 
the buying of grain, and erected a small eleva- 
tor at Sioux City. Shortly afterwards Mr. 
Peavey bought out his partner's interest, and 
through negotiations with prominent millers 
of Minneapolis, obtained authority to act as 
agent for the purchase of wheat. Thus was 
formed the nucleus from which, by a process 
of gradual yet rapid expansion, his business 
has developed to its present colossal propor- 
tions. The modest little elevator at Sioux 
City became the progenitor of numerous and 
more imposing ones, which mark the course 
of the Northwestern Railway system through 
Northern Iowa, Southern Minnesota and South 
Dakota; the largest, at Duluth, holding 5,000,- 
(MMI bushels, and the combined capacity of all 
being 35,000,000 bushels. The extension of the 
business in time necessitated the removal of 
his headquarters to Minneapolis, which was 
effecled in 1884. During the fifteen years 
since he established his offices in that city the 
business of F. II. Peavey & Company has made 
strides commensurate with the proportions of 
the giant it had already become, until now it 
undoubtedly leads all concerns of its kind in 
the world. In contemplating such phenomenal 
development of an industry under the guidance 
of an individual, one is struck with amaze- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



221 



ment that any man can do so much; and, in- 
deed, no man can, except as he co-operates with 
evolutionary forces. The underlying secrel of 
the vasi successes of the world's industrial 
leaders is that deep-seeing and far-seeing 
faculty by which they discern the progressive 
(rend and play into Nature's bands. Having 
thus watched and studied his business through- 
out ils growth, Mr. Peavey knows it familiarly 
in all ils ramifications, and is able to keep his 
affairs well in hand without giving up his 
whole time to them. He has a multitude of 
interests, not a few of which are of a philan- 
thropic character. The Samaritan Hospital at 
Sioux City — an institution well worthy of its 
name — owes its freedom from debt and in- 
creased usefulness to his bounty and influence. 
Educational matters lie always near his heart. 
and he has been for several years a member 
of the Board of Education of Minneapolis. 
He loves his adoptive city, having imbibed to 
the full the contagion of pride and enthusiasm 
which characterizes her citizens, and he is a 
zealous and powerful promoter of her public 
enterprises. And beyond his city and his 
State, his interest is extended and his influence 
felt, even to the furthest limits of the North- 
west. While residing in Sioux City, Mr. 
Peavey organized and served as president of 
the Security National Bank, which is now the 
leading national bank of that city. He is one 
of the directors of the Minneapolis, St. Paul & 
Sault Ste. Marie Railway, as also of the Minne- 
apolis & St. Louis line. Two classes of people 
who find in Mr. Peavey a faithful champion 
are the poor and the young. He is a man of 
broad charities — not the less so because he 
follows the more rational modern method of 
helping people to help themselves. He is the 
author of an unique scheme for stimulating 
the newsboys of Minneapolis to economy, b\ 
inducing them to deposit regularly a portion of 
their slender earnings in the bank, with an 
arrangement for having the sum doubled from 
his own account every three months. This 
plan has started many a boy. who without 
such a stimulus might have developed habits 
of indolence or extravagance, on the road to 
a successful business career; for to the im- 



pressionable mind of a boy, quite as much as 
to his seniors, the possession of property gives 
a sense of dignity and responsible citizenship. 
So great is the concern which Mr. Peavey has 
manifested for the waif population of Minne- 
apolis, that it has sometimes been called his 
hobby. Apart from his acts of more direct 
benevolence, Mr. Peavey is in himself a con- 
stant incentive to thrift and prudence, setting 
a wholesome example of industry and ab- 
stinence from risky speculation. To the army of 
men in his employ he pays good salaries, justly 
and beneficently requiring in return a full 
equivalent of good service. Loyal as is Mr. 
Peavey to Minneapolis, and the whole region 
over which his commercial interests extend, he 
still cherishes a deep tenderness for his native 
New England. As his Western interests and 
affections center in Minneapolis, so his Eastern 
ones center in the city of his birth; and East- 
port, Maine, is indebted to him for its public 
library, he having several years ago donated 
funds for its erection. It is called the "Albert 
Peavey Memorial Building," in honor of his 
father, and is at once a rich public boon and 
a splendid filial monument. As he is a lover 
of nature, so Mr. Peavey is a lover of art — 
nature's reflection — in which he is a connois- 
seur; and he has a large private collection of 
choice and rare pieces — an ideal retreat from 
the prose of business life. A description of 
Mr. Peavey's person would coincide with his 
character — broad, massive, vital, of an easy 
and agreeable magnetic presence. He looks, 
as he is, well able to bear his full share of 
the world's burdens; but he shrinks from 
notoriety with positive aversion, and but 
reluctantly consents to this portraiture in 
recognition of the urgent modern demand for 
such an introduction to the men who stand 
back of our progressive institutions. One of 
the leading bankers of Chicago, who has 
known Mr. Peavey intimately during the 
greater part of his business career, says of 
him: 

"He is a man of remarkable executive abil- 
ity, especially along the lines of organization, 
lie has a peculiar faculty for selecting brighi 
and able men for the component parts of this 



222 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



great organization. Those who catch the in- 
spiration and 'pull with him' are sure of their 
reward. But there is no place for drones in 
the Peavey hive. During his entire business 
career, Mr. Peavey lias made it a point to be 
prompt, even punctilious, in meeting every 
financial obligation. .More than this — he has 
many times assisted those in financial straits 
in times of business depression, by paying his 
obligations before they became due; he, by 
his business sagacity and thrift, having the 
ready money to do so. As a result of his busi- 
ness 'methods. Mr. Peavey has established his 
reputation with bankers, from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, as a man of the highest commercial 
honor." 

In 1872 Mr. Peavey was married to Miss 
Mary D. Wright, eldest daughter of Hon. 
George G. Wright, one of the most prominent 
residents of Des Moines. Iowa. Judge Wright 
has been a member, both of the State Legis- 
lature and the United States Senate; was for 
fifteen years on the Supreme Court Pench, 
and for a number of years Chief Justice; 
founded the State University Law School, and 
is one of the founders of the Republican party 
in Iowa. Mr. Peavey is the devoted father of 
three children: Lucia Louisa — Mrs. Frank T. 
Heffelfinger since October, 1895; Mary Drew, 
wife of Frederick P.. Wells since September, 
1898, and George Wright Peavey. The sons 
and sons-in-law are all members of the firm 
of F. H. Peavey & Company, and they vie 
with each other in loyalty to the firm and 
respect for the founder. Two little represen- 
tatives of a new generation, Frank Peavey and 
Totten Heffelfinger. have come to add their 
sanction to their grandsire's gray hairs and 
a generous contribution to the joy of his do- 
mestic hearth. 

• 

OLIVER DALRYMPLE. 

Mr. Dalrymple was born in Warren county, 
Pennsylvania, in 1830. His father was (dark 
Dalrymple, a native of Amherst, Massachu- 
setts, and a descendant of the old and dis- 
tinguished Dalrymples of Scotland. For two 
hundred years the name of this family was 
illustrious in the annals of Croat Britain, 
where its members bore the proudest titles. 



tilled the highest civil and military positions, 
and were eminent as authors, jurists and 
statesmen. The maiden name of his mother 
was Elizabeth Shoff. born at Troy. New York, 
and she was of the well-known Dutch stock 
that settled the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. 
His grandfathers on both sides fought in the 
Revolutionary War, and other members of his 
family served in the War of 1812. His educa- 
tion was completed at Alleghany College, 
Pennsylvania, and at Yale, supplemented by 
a course in the Yale Law School. For a time 
he was principal of the Warren Academy, at 
Warren, Pennsylvania, where he was admitted 
to the bar in 1855. It was in 1855 — now forty- 
live years ago — when Mr. Dalrymple crossed 
the Mississippi river to cast his lot with the 
pioneers of the Great West in their work of 
the settlement and development of a vast 
country, the greater portion of which then 
seemed almost as virgin as the earth when the 
Creator had made it. Then a few steamboats, 
chiefly from Southern waters, lined the levee 
at Si. Louis and made a primary commercial 
center for the West. Railroad men of heroic 
mould were struggling to connect Chicago, 
.Milwaukee, and the Croat Lakes with the 
Mississippi river — building at the rate of 
t weiity miles a year. Eastern Iowa and South- 
ern Wisconsin had a few scattered settlements. 
The government had recently negotiated the 
purchase of Minnesota from the Indians. The 
map of civilization practically gave out at the 
Palls of St. Anthony. Where now are North 
and South Dakota and the States farther to 
the westward was a veritable "terra incog- 
nita," with the Indian, the fur trader, and the 
bison in undisputed possession. To-day. how- 
changed! Forty-five years of history have 
been recorded. The sturdy pioneer had done 
his work. Magnificent achievements have 
come from his industry, prowess, and enter- 
prise. Eight great States, being in area nearly 
one-fourth of our Republic, have been peopled, 
opened up to husbandry, checkered with rail- 
roads, crowned with growing cities, endowed 
with institutions of learning, the ordinances 
of religion, and all that pertains to the great- 
est advancement of an intelligent, free, and 



«. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



prosperous people. Iu April, 1856, after mak- 
ing a tour of the Northwesl and traveling 
through several States, Mr. Dalrymple settled 
in Minnesota and opened a law, land, and loan 
office, and for several years carried on exten- 
sive operations in these branches at Chattield, 
Faribault, and St. Peter, where United Slates 
land offices were then located. January 1, 
I860, he removed to St. Paul, where he took up 
his permanent residence and entered upon the 
practice of law. Shortly thereafter he formed 
a law partnership with the late Horace R. 
Bigelow, and soon became known as a success- 
ful lawyer. In 1862 occurred the massacre of 
nearly 1,000 settlers and the destruction of 
vast values of property, by the Sioux Indians 
in Minnesota. Mr. Dalrymple enlisted in the 
cause of the survivors of the massacre, who 
had suffered loss of property, and demanded 
that the general government should in- 
demnify the loss from the annuity funds held 
in trust for the hostile Indians under former 
treaties. Aided by others, he finally succeeded 
in obtaining a grant of more than $1,000,000 
for the surviving settlers — many of them 
widows and orphans, made so by the massacre 
— whose property had been destroyed. .Mr. 
Dalrynrple's tastes and inclinations led him to 
rural life and agricultural pursuits. In 1866 
he withdrew from the practice of law and 
for the past thirty-five years he lias been en- 
gaged in farming. His field of operations for 
the first ten years was in the peninsula be- 
tween the St. Croix and the Mississippi, in 
Washington county, Minnesota, about fifteen 
miles southeast of St. Paul. Here he had 
three large farms, which he named the Grant, 
the Sherman, and the Sheridan farms, in honor 
of the three great generals of the Civil War. 
And here he "cropped" 2,500 acres of grain, a 
feat which thirty-five years ago was regarded 
as well nigh impossible, for farm machinery 
was then quite imperfect and every bundle of 
wheat was bound by hand on the ground. Dur- 
ing the past twenty-five years he has operated 
extensively in the now far-famed valley of the 
Red River of the North. In the winter of 
1875-6, when the country was in a primitive 
state, and before there was a railroad station 



or a dwelling house between Fargo and Bis 
march, he purchased — partly from the North- 
ern Pacific Railroad Company and partly from 
the government— 75,00(1 aires of the choicest 
and best located wheat lands in the Red river 
valley. Of part of these lauds he was sole 
owner, and in the remainder he had a half 
interest, with Gen. ('.. \V. Cass, of New York. 
president and director of the Northern Pacific; 
lion. B. P. Cheney, of Boston, and Grandin 
Bros., bankers, of Tidioute, Pennsylvania. 
The Bed river valley was originally regarded 
as practically worthless. Mr. Dalrymple was 
a farmer and believed in the valley. When 
he first visited the country, in the winter of 
1.875-6, to invest in it, the railroad was built 
to Bismarck, but the cars did not run for want 
of business, lie "pumped" his way into the 
valley on a hand car. and cut and boxed sam- 
ples and specimens of the soil. On returning 
to St. Paul he exhibited these specimens to 
his family, remarking that the lands from 
which they had come were intrinsically worth 
$25 per acre to raise wheat on. regardless of 
the effect of the future settlement of the 
country. By using railroad stock at par and 
Indian scrip, these lands cost from forty cents 
to three dollars per acre. They are at present, 
as now improved, salable at an average price 
of $30 per acre, and have paid twelve per cent, 
on an average, during good and bad years, 
while in cultivation. Starting in 1876 Mr. 
Dalrymple broke up and put under plow 6,000 
acres per annum each year for five years, con 
stituting a wheal farm of 30,000 acres, 
equipped with good farm buildings, teams, 
machinery, and elevators, of which he is three- 
quarters owner and general manager, making 
Mr. Dalrymple the largest wheat grower in 
the world. He was the originator and the 
pioneer in "bonanza," or wholesale farming, 
which has contributed so much to the settle- 
ment and development of the new Northwest, 
and given to its author more than a National 
notoriety and reputation. Mr. Dalrymple's 
famous farm is operated in divisions of 2,500 
acres each. Over each division is a mounted 
foreman, with a superintendent over each six 
divisions. Mr. Dalrymple himself takes the 



224 



I'HM'KAI'IIY OF MINNESOTA. 



general management, and gives directions to 
the superintendents. Each division is equipped 
with iis own separate buildings, trains, and 
machinery, and is connected with the head- 
quarters by telephone, while the headquarters 
connects with the Western Union telegraph. 
The lands of the farm are so level and free 
from obstructions that in plowing, etc., four 
or six horse teams sometimes make as high 
as twelve miles in a single round. A bonanza 
farm of this size uses in its operation 150 
seven-foot self-binding harvesters, 150 gang 
plows, TO eleven-foot gang drills and 1 li extra 
large steam thrashing outfits, with self-feeding 
and self-stacking attachments, straw being 
used in the engines for fuel. The farm owns 
all property used thereon, and also owns its 
own elevators and hoards and lodges its own 
laborers. From 500 to 600 men are employed, 
and about 000 horses. The farm raises its 
own horses. Its twelve steam thrashers each 
turn out from 2,000 to 2,500 bushels of wheat 
per day, and the farm ships daily, as thrashed, 
two trainloads of grain to Duluth, where a 
vessel is loaded every other day for Buffalo or 
New York. The accounts of this business are 
kept with the system of a bank, and the farm 
ing operations are carried on with the precision 
and discipline of a military organization. 
Trior to the building of railroads, Mr. Dalrym- 
ple, with another gentleman, built and ran a 
line of boats for" several years on the Bed 
River of the North between Fargo and Winni- 
peg, for the purpose of carrying out their 
wheat and opening the country to settlement. 
In 1871, Mr. Dalrymple married Mary E. Stew- 
ard, the daughter of Hon. John Steward, of 
Panama. New York. For many years Mrs. 
Dalrymple has been prominent in the benevo- 
lent and religious societies of St. Paul. Mr. 
and Mrs. Dalrymple have two sons, William 
and John, both graduates of the University of 
Minnesota. William is in the grain business 
at Duluth and Minneapolis, and also attends 
to his father's wheat and elevator business. 
John manages his father's estates in the Red 
river valley, and spends the winter in St. Paul. 
Mr. Dalrymple is an able and successful busi- 
ness man. He lives in St. Paul, where he has 



an elegant and comfortable home, and spends 
his summers upon his estates, which have been 
to him a source of enjoyment, owing to hi> 
quiet tastes and habits and his fondness for 
country life. He has never sought official posi- 
tion, hut has regarded the private station as 
the post of honor. Mr. Dalrymple takes some 
satisfaction in having for forty-five years been 
one of the pioneers of the West who have 
contributed to that development of the coun- 
try which has prepared it for its splendid 
present and its magnificent possibilities and 
growing future. 



DELOS A. MONFORT. 

The family of Monfort or de Monfort, as the 
name was originally spelled, originated in the 
Province of Brittany, France. Having adopted 
the Huguenot faith at the time of the Prot- 
estant Reformation, they were compelled to 
have France soon afterward and seek refuge 
from religious persecution, in Germany. Their 
property was confiscated and given to a 
younger branch of the family, who renouncing 
their faith, remained behind. The refugees, 
settling in the Province of Baden, near the 
lake of Constance, founded the town to which 
they gave their family name, and here Peter 
Monfort, a descendant of this family, was born 
in 1724. In 1750 he removed to the United 
States, and locating in the State of New* Jer- 
sey, became a member of the Assembly of that 
State, and also one of the original proprietors 
of a large tract of land near where the city 
of Trenton now stands. He was the father of 
four sons, Abram, Jacobus, John and Peter. 
Abram Monfort, the eldest son of Peter Mon- 
fort, was born in New Jersey in 1752, and re- 
moved to New York in 1780, settling near the 
present site of the city of Rochester, where 
his only son, also called Abram, was born, in 
1783. This son afterward removed to Jeffer- 
son, New York, and later to the town of 
Pentield, New York. Jared Goodrich Monfort. 
the eldest son of Abram Monfort and Eleanor 
Goodrich Monfort, was born at Jefferson, New 
York, in 1810, and later removed to Hamden 



RIOGRARHY OF MINNESOTA. 



and then to Unadilla, New York, at which 
latter place he died in 1864. Delos Abram 
Monfort, the subject of this sketch, was 
born at Haraden, New York, April 6, 1835, 
and was the eldest son of Jared G. Monfort 
and Loretta Fuller Monfort, daughter of 
Nathan Fuller and Chloe Williams Fuller, and 
granddaughter of Nathan Fuller and Phoebe 
Harris Fuller, the former being a descendant 
of John Fuller, one of the earliest settlers of 
Attleboro, Massachusetts. While still quite 
young Delos A. Monfort removed with his 
parents to Unadilla, New York, where his 
father was for many years a leading merchant, 
and continued to reside up to the time of his 
death. Here he received his education, and 
then, as a youth, he went to Cooperstown, New 
York, where he entered the employ of Joshua 
A. Story, a prominent dry goods merchant of 
that place. In 1854, with another young man, 
he made quite an extensive trip through the 
Northwest, and was very much impressed with 
this portion of the country. In 1S57, largely 
through the influence of Judge R. R. Nelson, 
of this city, who had also been a resident of 
Cooperstown, he decided to settle in St. Raul. 
He arrived there in May, 1K57, on the old 
steamer "Menomonie," which was the first 
steamboat to arrive that year, the railroad 
from the East at that time running only as 
far as Freeport, Illinois, at which place lie 
took the stage for Galena, Illinois, and from 
thence came by steamer to St. Paul. On 
arriving here he entered the private bank- 
ing house of Mackubin & Edgerton as a 
teller, which bank was then situated in the old 
Winslow House at the Seven Corners. When 
this bank was merged into the Reople"s Stale 
Rank a few years later. Mr. Monfort became 
cashier, and when the bank was finally reor- 
ganized under the national banking system, in 
1864; after the passage of the National Rank 
Act, and became the Second National Rank, 
he continued in the position of cashier under 
the new organization. A few years later he 
became vice-president of the bank, and on the 
death of the president, Mr. Erastus S. Edger- 
ton, in April, 1S93, he became president, which 
position he held up to the time of his death. 



For several years prior to the time of his 
decease he was the oldest banker in the 
Slate in point of years of service. In I860 
Mr. Monfort married Miss Mary .1. Edger- 
ton, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Erastus 
Edgerton, of Franklin. New York, and sister 
of .Mr. Erastus S. Edgerton, one of the orig- 
inal organizers of the Second National Hank 
and its predecessors, the People's State Bank, 
and the private bank of Mackubin & Edger- 
ton, and also president of the Second National 
Rank, from its organization until his death. 
Although banking was his life work, Mr. Mon- 
fort was at one time or another engaged in 
several other lines of business, as side issues. 
Thus he was at various times during his busi- 
ness career actively interested in an insurance 
company, the grocery business, a foundry, and 
a silver mine in the Black Hills, North Dakota, 
but during the last fifteen years of his life he 
devoted himself exclusively to the manage- 
ment of the Second National Rank. However, 
his entire time and attention were by no means 
devoted to business, for his was a well rounded 
character. During his earlier years he was 
fond of athletics of various kinds. lie was 
always fond id' horseback riding, an exercise 
which he continued up to within two years of 
I he lime of his death. He was also very fond 
of fencing, and became very proficient in the 
use of both the foil and broad-sword. He had 
a great natural liking for military men ami 
things military. For a portion of the lime 
during the Civil War he was captain of a 
militia company, which organization was, 
however, never mustered into active service. 
For a long time he took a great interest in 
the orders of Free-masonry and Knights 
Templar, and was for many years Eminent 
Commander of Damascus Commandery of St. 
Raul, and was at one time Grand Commander 
nl the State of Minnesota, as well as a 32d 
degree Mason. He also took much pleasure in 
lini h the practice and competitive drills, as well 
as the memorable encampment of Damascus 
Commandery, at White Rear Lake, during the 
summer of 1879, while he was commander of 
that organization. It was, however, in his home, 
surrounded by his family, his friends and his 



226 



CJO<;i; Al'IIY OF MINNESOTA. 



books, thai lie ever found his truest and great- 
est pleasure. From his earliest youth be was 
a dose student of men, of affairs and of books. 
Reading and study was with liini a lifelong 
habit, and he spent much of his leisure time 
in this way. Mis reading was very extensive, 
ami covered almost every line of art. science 
and literature, and having a very retentive 
memory, his mind was a vast storehouse of 
information on almost every conceivable sub- 
ject. His library, which is one of the fines! 
private libraries in the Northwest, includes 

many old and rare 1 ks, as well as all the 

standard authors, and here is carefully pre- 
served every book that he ever possessed in 
his life. Although never a politician or candi- 
date for public office, he always took an active 
interest in public affairs, and ever stood 
strongly for truth and right. Thus he always 
served his country, his State and his city in 
a quiet, unostentatious and unselfish way. He 
was one of the early members of the St. Paul 
Chamber of Commerce, and sewed several 
times as treasurer of that organization. He 
was for one year president of the Minnesota 
Bankers' Association, vice-president of the 
Dual City Bankers' League, chairman of the 
executive committee, and afterwards president 
of the Town and Country Club, president of 
the Minnesota Board of World's Fair Commis- 
sioners for the Columbian Exposition at 
Chicago, in IS!!:!, one of the charter members, 
and at the time of his death, a member of the 
board <d' governors of the Minnesota Club, and 
was also a member of the Commercial Club, 
the While Bear Lake Yacht Club, the Society 
of Colonial Wars, the .Minnesota Historical 
Society, and a member of the board id' directors 
of the St. Paul Public Library. Mr. Monfort 
was a man who never possessed very great 
physical strength. Nevertheless, his erect 
military carriage and quick elastic step indi- 
cated a great reserve force of nervous energy. 
In 1878, his health being poor, he spent nine 
months abroad. He enjoyed especially the 
Paris Exposition held that year, the great 
Spring Review at Berlin, the magnificent 
scenery of the Rhine and of the Alps, and the 
art treasures and the old historic places of 



Italy. Mr. Monfort's health had been delicate 
for the past two years, but it was only in 
October, L898, that he became seriously ill. 
lie was confined to the house during the 
latter part of the fall, most of the winter and 
the early spring. About the first of May he 
went East, accompanied by his wife, hoping 
that a change of climate migbi benefit his 
health, lb- spent some three weeks in Wash- 
ington, D. O, visiting his daughter and her 
family, and then went to Atlantic City, New 
Jersey, where he improved steadily for two 
months. During the last four weeks he was 
not as well, but was not thought to be in an 
alarming condition. The end came suddenly 
and painlessly, at six o'clock on Saturday 
morning, August lid, 1899. He is survived by 
his wife, his daughter, Mrs. Edward H. Gheen, 
wife of Commander Gheen, of the United 
States Navy, his son Frederick D. Monfort, 
cashier of the Second National Bank, St. Paul; 
his brother, Mr. Charles J. Monfort, and his 
sisters, Mrs. John Summers, of this city, 
and Mrs. James II. Keyes, of Oneonta, 
New York. A just and upright man and a 
patriotic citizen has gone to his reward. A 
good husband, a kind brother, a gentle and 
affectionate father, a thoughtful friend and 
neighbor, will be missed and mourned by 
many, for gentle, courteous and just to all. he 
had no enemies and his friends were legion. 
The influence and example of such a life can- 
no! be effaced, and the winds of the greatest 
of the English poets might truly be applied to 
him: "His life was gentle, and the parts so 
made up in him that nature might stand up 
before the whole world and say, 'This was a 
man!' " ■ — 



TIMOTHY J. SIIEEIIAN. 

Timothy J. Sheehan, the commander of Fort 
Ridgely, Minnesota, during the Sioux massacre 
of 1862, is one of the best-known men in the 
State. He was born in the County Cork, Ire- 
land, December 21, 1835. He was the son of 
Jeremiah and Ann McCarthy Sheehan, who 
lived on a farm in that county. Both his 
parents died in 1838, when he was but three 




The Century PuMishim/ S Cry rail ny Co Chicaner 





BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



years old, and he was reared alums! from in- 
fancy to young manhood by his paternal 
grandfather. He was given the rudiments of 
education in the national schools of his native 
land, being kept at his studies until he was 
fourteen years of age. In 1850 he came to the 
United States, landing in New York City in 
the month of November, and going thence 
directly to Glen's Falls. New York, where he 
again attended school for some time, and 
where for two years he was engaged as a 
mechanic's apprentice. In L855 he went to 
Dixon, Illinois, where he remained two years, 
at work in a saw-mill in the summer and at- 
tending school in the winter. In the spring of 
1857 he came to the then Territory of Minne- 
sota, arriving May 3, at Albert Lea, then a 
frontier village only a year old, and Minnesota 
lias ever since been his home. ( >n Lake Albert 
Lea, three miles from (he village, he made a 
homestead, and for some years worked his 
claim. In 1860 he was elected clerk of the 
township of Albert Lea, was re-elected in 

1861, and held the office until he resigned to 
enter the Union Army. On October 11, 1861, 
when Hie war of the Rebellion was fairly on, 
he left his home at Albert Lea and enlisted as 
a private in Company F, Fourth Minnesota 
Infantry Volunteers. lie was made a corporal, 
and soon became so proficient in the duties of 
a soldier and evidenced such tilness generally, 
that Gen. John B. Sanborn recommended him 
for a commission. February 15, 1862, at Fort 
Snelling, he was discharged from the Fourth 
Regiment, by order id' Major General Halleck, 
to accept promotion, and three days later, on 
February 18, was commissioned by Governor 
Ramsey, first lieutenant of Company ('. of the 
Fifth Regiment, Minnesota Volunteers, then 
being organized. His company was made up 
very largely of men from Freeborn county, and 
Lieiiienanl Sheehan recruited sixty-five men 
for the company among his neighbors and 
friends. After this his military experience 
was a very notable one throughout. Upon the 
organization of the Fifth Regiment, March 20, 

1862, Company C — Lieutenant Sheehan's 
company — was ordered to Fori Ripley. Minne- 
sota. Lieutenant Sheehan's services in Minne- 



soia, in 1862, meritorious, conspicuous and 
valuable as they were to the Slate, are so fully 
set forth in the pages of other authentic his- 
tories thai l hey need noi here be described in 
detail, and only certain incidents connected 
therewith may be adverted to. On .June is, 
1862, Lieutenant Sheehan was ordered, with 
fifty men of his company, to march overland 
from Fort Ripley to Fort Ridgely, a distance, 
by the route marched, of nearly two hundred 
miles. He arrived with his detachment on the 
28th, and the next day was ordered with the 
portion of his company present and fifty men 
of Company B, under Lieut. Thomas P. Gere, 
to the Yellow .Medicine Indian agency, forty 
five miles distant up the Minnesota river, to 
report to Agent Galbraith, for the purpose of 
preserving order and protecting LTnited States 
property during the time of the annuity pay- 
ment, which was expected to take place in a 
few days. He was placed in command of the 
force, consisting of one hundred men, and took 
with him one cannon, a twelve-pound mountain 
howitzer. On (he 27th of July, while in service 
at Yellow Medicine, Lieutenant Sheehan, with 
fourteen of his soldiers, four cili/.ens, and an 
Indian guide named Wasu-ho-washte (or 
Good Voiced Hail) made an expedition from 
the agency to the Dakota line west of Lake 
Benton, after the bloody and merciless Ink 
pa-doo-ta, the leader of the Indians in the 
Spirit lake and Springfield massacres of 1857. 
The Lieutenant set out on the morning of July 
28, before daylight, and for a week was en- 
gaged in an unsuccessful search for the wicked 
bui wily marauder, who. warned id' his danger, 
had lied swiftly and far into South Dakota. 
The troublous times at Yellow Medicine dur- 
ing the month of .Inly and first pari of August, 
1862, are described in oilier volumes. It niusl 
suffice here to say thai the agency was almost 
constantly threatened by several thousand 
wild, turbulent, and hungry Indians, who were 
ready for any desperate undertaking because 
of the protracted and inexplicable delay of 
the annual payment. Nothing saved the 
agency, iis property and its while occupants, 
at this time, but I he presence and the brave 
and intelligent conducl of Lieutenant Sheehan 



RloGRAI'IIY (>F MINNESOTA. 



mid his soldiers, who now had two pieces of 
artillery, When, on August 4th, about eight 
hundred armed warriors came upon the 
agency, broke in the door of the government 
warehouse, and began plundering it of its 
stoics, there was do faltering in this gallant 
band. A mountain howitzer was promptly 
trained >m the broken doorway by Lieutenant 
Gere. The Indians at once fell away from the 
range of the cannon, and through the avenue 
thus formed Lieutenant Sheehan and Ser- 
geant Trescott, with sixteen men, marched 
straight to the warehouse and drove out every 
plundering Indian. Lieutenant Sheehan kept 
his men well in hand. If, under the greal 
provocation, a single musket had been fired, 
not a soldier would have lived to tell the story. 
A dreadful slaughter was further prevented 
by Lieutenant Sheehan's success in inducing 
Agenl Galbraith to give the Indians a moder- 
ate supply of provisions; and when the 
savages again became insolent and menacing, 
he put his men into position and his guns "in 
battery"' in front of the warehouse, and then 
the Indians withdrew. The impending storm 
of carnage and rapine had, however, only been 
checked for the time. But it was in the gal- 
lant defence of Fori Ridgely when and where 
Lieutenant Sheehan so greatly distinguished 
himself and rendered such invaluable service. 
On the evening of August 11'. 1862, the Lieu- 
tenant returned to Port Ridgely from Yellow 
Medicine with his command; all prosped of 
trouble with the Sioux Indians in that quarter 
had disappeared. On the 17th he was ordered 
in march with his detachment back to Fori 
Ripley, and he set out in the early morning of 
the next day — August IS. The Sioux had 
broken out at the Redwood agency and had 
commenced one of the most horrible massacres 
recorded in the pages of American history, 
indiscriminately murdering and scalping men. 
women and children, and burning and destroy- 
ing all property in the surrounding country. 

A i eleven o'clock in the forei n the news 

of the outbreak reached Captain Marsh at 
Fori Ridgely. and he al once determined to 

move to the scene of the trouble with 1he 

larger portion of his company. At the same 



time he dispatched a messenger. Corporal Mc- 
Lean, with the following order to Lieutenant 
Sheehan. who was then on his way to Fort 
Ripley: 

"Headquarters, Fort Ridgely, 

August IS, 1862. 
Lieutenant Sheehan: — 

It is absolutely necessary that you should 

return with your command immediately I i 

this I'ost. The Indians are raising hell at the 

Lower Agency. Return as soon as possible. 

JOHN S. MARSH, 

Captain Commanding I'ost." 

Corpora] McLean did not overtake Lieuten- 
ant Sheehan's detachment until evening, when 
it was in cam]) near Glencoe, forty-two miles 
from Fort Ridgely. The men had marched 
twenty-five miles that hot day and were going 
into bivouac for the night, but the lieutenant 
al once ordered them to "about face." and they 
obeyed cheerfully, and the return march was 
begun. Meantime Captain Marsh and twenty- 
three of the men had perished in the deadly In- 
dian ambuscade at the Redwood ferry. Fort 
Ridgely was being filled with citizen refugees 
— men, women and children — many of them 
wounded, anil all destitute and terror-stricken. 
The prairies, the roads, and the little farms 
were strewn with mangled bodies; murder and 
rapine were in the air; the glare of burning 
buildings illuminated the sky. The savages 
had beset the fort and the surrounding coun- 
try. The fort was merely a military post, a 
collection of buildings about a square, with 
not a stone in place as a fortification, not a 
spadeful of earth thrown up as a breastwork. 
As a garrison to defend the place, there were 
but twenty-nine men with muskets, under 
Lieutenant Gere, a young officer only nineteen 
years of age. Following is an extract from 
Lieiiicnaiil Gere's account of the situation at 
1 his I hue: 

"The Indians, hilarious at the desolation 
I hey had wrought during the day, were at the 
agency, celebrating in mad orgies their suc- 
cesses, and neglected their opportunity to 
capture what proved to be the barrier to the 
devastation of the Minnesota valley. Tuesday 
morning dawned on mingled hope and appre 
heiision for the coining hours, and when sun 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



229 



light shone upon the prairies, every quarter 
was closely scanned from the roof of the 
uighesl building through the powerful tele- 
scope fortunately at hand. At about nine 
o'clock Indians began congregating on the 
prairie some two miles wesl of the fort, 
mounted, on foot, and in wagons, where, in 
plain view of the fort, a council was held. 
Tins council was addressed by Little Crow and 
their movements for the day decided upon. 
While this was in progress, cheers of welcome 
announced the arrival at the fort of Lieutenant 
Sheehan with his fifty men of < iompany * !. The 
courier dispatched by Captain Marsh on the 
previous day had reached this command at 
evening, soon after it had gone into camp. 
forty-two miles from Fort Ridgely, between 
New Auburn and Glencoe. Promptly obeying 
the order for his return, Lieutenant Sheehan 
at once struck tents, and the command cum 
menced its forced march, covering during the 
night the entire distance traversed in the two 
preceding days, arriving the first to the rescue 
and meriting high praise. Lieutenant Sheehan 
now took command at Fort Ridgely." 

The Lieutenant and his men reached the 
fori in the nick of time, at ten minutes of nine 
A. M. on Tuesday morning, having marched 
forty-two miles in ten hours, and seventy miles 
in twenty-two hours. There is no parallel to 
this great endeavor in the official records of 
the War Department, and no account of its 
having been surpassed, is mentioned in history. 
Reaching the fort, he found the place 
thronged with weeping and sorrowful people; 
illy supplied with food, water and ammunition; 
without sufficient protection even against the 
Indians' bullets: with but few arms save those 
of the soldiers, and no prospect of reinforce- 
ment or relief of any sort. Bui when the 
Renville Rangers arrived, he had then one 
hundred and fifty brave and resolute men in 
his command, three good cannon, and a great 
interest at stake, and he determined to defend 
the post and its helpless occupants d> the last. 
He knew that Fort Ridgely was the gateway 
to the lower Minnesota valley, and that if it 
were forced by the savages, not only would 
there be one of the greatest and bloodiest 
butcheries in history, but the entire beautiful 
valley would be desolated with tire and gun 
and tomahawk. The Indians were present in 



vastly superior numbers, and were eager to 
attack him, confident of success. Of the de- 
fence of Fort Ridgely during its eight full 
days of siege and investment by a very largely 
superior force, history speaks; but of the re- 
sponsibilities upon the young commander, his 
trying experiences, his great exertions, there 
can be no adequate description. He was 
greatly aided and supported by his gallant 
and faithful subordinate, Lieut. T. P. Gere, 
and by every soldier, and also by the citizen 
defenders, whom he organized into a company, 
with Hon. It. H. Randall as their captain. The 
first formidable and concerted attack on the 
fort by Little Crow and his chief's, with about 
six hundred braves and warriors, on August 
20th, began about two o'clock P. M., and did 
no1 cease until dark". It was met and repulsed 
at every quarter, for the commander was pre- 
pared for if. He had placed his artillery, had 
built breastworks, and distributed his men t 1 
the best advantage, and the result was all that 
could be desired. Tn the desperate fight dur- 
ing the afternoon, the Indians were whipped 
and driven off. The heaviest and. most des- 
perate attack was made on Fort Ridgely on 
August 22. Little Crow, believing that if Fort 
Ridgely were taken his path to the Mississippi 
would be comparatively (dear, resolved to 
make one more desperate attempt at its cap- 
ture, his numbers Inning been largely aug- 
mented. The second and most furious attack 
was made at about one o'clock P. M. With 
demoniac yells the savages surrounded the 
fort and at once commenced a heavy musketry 
tire. The garrison returned the fire with equal 
vigor and with great effect on the yelling 
demons. Early in the fight, Little Crow with 
his warriors took possession of the government 
stables, the sutler's store and all outside 
buildings, and in order to dislodge the Indians 
from those buildings, Lieutenant Sheehan or- 
dered them set on lire. Then on came the 
painted, yelling warriors, tiling volley after 
volley, as they charged 011 the garrison. The 
heroic defenders opened an all-around fire from 
1 !■!■ artillery and musketry, which paralyzed 
fhe Indians and drove them back'. Thus, after 
six hours of continuous blazing conflict, alter- 



2 3° 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



nately lit up by the flames of burning build- 
ings and darkened by whirling clouds of 
smoke, terminated the second and last attack 
on Fort Ridgely. Four more days and nights 
of suspense ensued until, on the morning of 
the 27th of August, the fori was relieved 
by the advance of General Sibley's force. Be- 
fore the fight the following message was re 
ceived from Hen. c. E. Flandrau, commanding 
at New I'lni : 

"New Ulm, Augusl 20. 
Commander, Fori Ridgely: 

Send me 100 men and guns if possible. We 
are surrounded by Indians and fighting every 
hour. Twelve whites killed and many 
wounded. C. E. FLANDRAU, 

Commanding New Ulm." 

Flandrau's message was most discouraging, 
for it shewed the general situation at New 
Ulm and the surrounding country. But the 
young lieutenant rose to the occasion with the 
address of a veteran, although this was his 
maiden battle. lie assumed charge of every- 
thing, and directed the defence in every detail. 
On August 31, 1862, he was promoted to cap- 
tain of his company. lie continued in com- 
mand of Fort Ridgely until September IS, 
when he was ordered with his company to Fort 
Ripley. After the Sioux massacre in Novem- 
ber, Companies 1! and C were sent to the 
south to join the main portion of their regi- 
ment, from which they had been separated 
since its organization, and reached it near 
Oxford. Mississippi, December 12, 1862. ('at- 
tain Sheehan served at the head of his com- 
pany in the South during tin' war of the 
Rebellion from December, 1862, to September. 
1865. He participated in several important 
campaigns, and was engaged in a number of 
battles and skirmishes, prominent among 
which were the siege id' and assault on Vicks- 
burg; the battle of Tupelo, Mississippi, where 
he was in command of the portions of the Fifth 
Minnesota and Eighth Wisconsin present, and 
other detachments, in all three hundred men; 
i he action at Abbeyville; i he long and arduous 
campaign through Arkansas and Missouri, 
known as the Price campaign; the battles 
alioui Nashville, notably that of December Hi, 



1864, and the siege of Mobile in the spring of 

1865. He was discharged from the service al 
Demopolis, Alabama. September 6, 1865. lb' 
was frequently mentioned in orders, and on 
many occasions distinguished himself. In the 
gallanl charge of General Hubbard's Brigade 
at Nashville, which swept away a part of 
Hood's strongest line. Captain Sheehan was 
among the foremost. His was the •■color cum 
pany" id' the regiment. Five color bearers 
weie shot down. Captain Sheehan seized the 
flag and charged with his company over the 
breastworks, commanding the Confederates to 
surrender to the flag. For his conduct on this 
occasion he was especially mentioned in the 
reports. September 1, 1865. Captain Sheehan 
was commissioned, by Governor Miller, lieu 
lenant colonel of his regiment. The line sub- 
stantial monument erected by the State in 
1896 on the former site of Fort Ridgely, to 
commemorate its defence in lst>2, bears upon 
it a brief history of the memorable engage- 
ment and a life-size bronze medallion of Lieu 
tenant Sheehan. the commander, as he 
appeared at the time. The dedicatory inscrip- 
tion reads. "In memory of the fallen, in 
recognition of the living, and for the emulation 
of future generations," and altogether the 
monument is a most befitting and appropriate 
structure. After his return from the army to 
his old home at Albert Lea, Minnesota, Colonel 
Sheehan re-engaged in his former occupation, 
that of farming. In 1871 he was elected sheriff 
of Freeborn county, and at subsequent (dec- 
lions was reelected live times, holding the 
office in all, six terms, or twelve years. In 
that position he showed ureal activity, adroit- 
ness and expedition in arresting criminals of 
various kinds, and was a very popular county 
officer. February 25, 1885, Colonel Sheehan 
was appointed by President Arthur agenl for 
the Chippewa Indians of the White Earth 
agency of Minnesota. This office he held for 
more than four years, or until dune. 1889. His 
service was of great value and importance, 
and acceptable both to the governmenl and 
the Indians. He took a prominent part in 
making what was known as the Bishop Whip- 
ple treaty of 1886, and the Henry M. Rice 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



W 



treaty of 1889, with the Chippewas of Minne- 
sota. In May, 1890, he was appointed Deputy 
U. S. Marshal by Col. J. O. Donahower. He 
has held the position ever since, under all the 
changes of administration, including the 
present Republican incumbent, Hon. W. H. 
Grimshaw. Colonel Sheehan himself lias 
always been a Republican. He has made a 
most efficient and valuable officer, lias often 
been cut rusted with matters of large responsi- 
bility, and has always discharged liis entire 
duties with intelligence and satisfaction. 
While in service as deputy marshal under 
Marshal O'Connor, in October, 1898, Colonel 
Sheehan took a prominent and an active part 
in the incidents connected with the battle 
with the Chippewa Indians at Sugar Point, 
which is described elsewhere in this volume. 
His intimate acquaintance with the Leech 
Lake Indians — having for four years been their 
agent — and his thorough knowledge of Indian 
character generally, enabled him to be of greal 
service on this occasion. He was first sent 
up to Leech Lake to arrest the turbulent In- 
dians who had resisted and who were still 
defying the authorities and the law. He ac- 
companied the force under General Bacon and 
Marshal O'Connor that went from Walker to 
Sugar Point, and it was Colonel Sheehan in 
person who arrested the first of the lawless 
Bear Islanders for whom warrants had been 
issued. When the battle began he at once 
became a participant and fought as he did at 
Ridgely. During the fight he was wounded 
three times — in the right arm, in the hip, and 
severely across the abdomen — yet lie never 
left the field. The wounds he received at Sugar 
Point made seven given him in battle — two at 
Ridgely, two at Nashville and three at Sugar 
Point. In the opinion of the best informed, 
a piece of work performed by Colonel Sheehan 
in the battle of Sugar Point contributed very 
largely to saving the white forces from utter 
defeat, if not from annihilation. This was his 
charge with a platoon of soldiers and deputy 
marshals on the Indian left flank, which was 
being pushed around and threatened to en- 
velop General Bacon and his entire command. 
Mr. Will. II. Brill, of the St. Paul Pioneer 



Press, who has written and published the 
standard account of the Sugar Point affair, 
says: 

"Meanwhile Colonel Sheehan had taken 
charge of the fighting on the right of the flank, 
and he did wonders with the green men that 
composed his command. He also refused to 
take shelter, but kept on walking up and down 
the line, encouraging his men and imploring 
them to keep cool. After the first two or three 
volleys he ordered his men to charge the fence 
on the right, under cover of which the Indians 
were pouring in a cross fire. The charge was 
successful, and the Indians were driven off. 
In this charge twelve of his detachment of 
twenty men were killed and wounded." 

Colonel Sheehan's conduct in the Sugar 
Point fight was the theme of admiring com- 
ment from the public press of the State and 
the Nation, and he received numerous letters 
of congratulations from friends and asso- 
ciates. Ex-Governor McGill wrote him as fol- 
lows: 

"St. Paul, October 12, 1898. 
Dear Colonel Sheehan: 

I congratulate you on the gallant part 
you played in the recent battle at Leech Lake 
with the hostile Indians, and I am profoundly 
grateful that your life was spared. In your 
case the hero of '62 has become the hero of 
'98. It has been thirty-six years since your 
famous tussle with the red men at Fort 
Ridgely. The lapse of lime seems neither to 
cool your blood nor modify your courage. You 
are the same gallant officer you were when I 
first met you at St. Peter after the siege of 
Fort Ridgely. I did not meet you personally 
then, but saw yon. and have always since that 
time carried you in my mind and heart as one 
of Minnesota's most gallant soldiers and 
bravest men. Cod bless you. Colonel, for all 
you have done and endured. But don't do so 
any more. You have won the right to refrain 
from further Indian fighting. Let the younger 
men do the rest of it. We want you with u* 
as long as the rest of us live. Poor Major 
Wilkinson! How sincerely I mourn his death. 
It was simply the chance of war that his life 
was taken, while yours was spared. Again 
congratulating you on your courage and never 
failing grit, and again admonishing you to 
stop fighting, I am sincerely. 
Your friend, 

A. R. McGILL." 



1T,2 



P.IOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Colonel Sheehan was married in November, 
1866, to Miss .Icnnic -Judge, who was also born 
in Ireland. They have three sons, now grown 
to manhood, and named, Jeremiah, George 
\Y.. and Edward Sheehan. Mrs. Sheehan is 
an accomplished and mosl estimable lady, and 
a worthy companion for her husband. She is 
prominent in church work and other beneficent 
movements, and a well-known member of the 
best social circles. The historian of Ihis 
volume, who has long and intimately known 
Colonel Sheehan, says: 

"All the world admires a hero. And when 
he has been lnave and imperiled himself in a 
right cause and the fruit of his courage is a 
substantial benefit to his fellow men. he is to 
be honored for all lime. With true courage 
came the other qualities and elements which 
constitute right manhood and make a man 
worthy of right distinction. As one who fills 
this measure — as one who has fought the bat 
ties of his State and his Country, and by his 
invincible courage and fidelity saved hundreds 
of valuable lives and a greal area of territory 
from destruction, and as one who. as a citizen, 
soldier, and public official has made an 1111 
blemished record — Colonel Sheehan well 
merits his place among Minnesota's most hon- 
orable and distinguished men. And it is 
gratifying and good to say that, with the 
blessing of Providence, there arc many more 
years of distinction and usefulness before him. 
Well does Colonel Sheehan deserve the gold 
and bronze medals which adorn his breast." 



WILLIAM II. DUNWOODY. 

William Hood Dunwoody, who has long been 
identified with the Hour milling interests of 
Minneapolis, is a native of Pennsylvania, born 
in Chester county. March 11. 1841. His father 
was .lames Dunwoody. whose father, grand- 
father and great-grandfather lived in the same 
vicinity in Chester county, and were all en- 
gaged in agricultural pursuits. The family is 
of Scotch ancestry. Mr. Dunwoody's mother 
was Hannah Hood, the daughter of William 
Hood, of Delaware county, Pennsylvania, 
whose ancestors came to Ihis country when 
William Peiin founded the colony which took 
his name. Mr. Dunwoody's early life was 



passed upon the farm where he was born. 
After a period of schooling in Philadelphia, he. 
at i he age of eighteen, entered his uncle's 
store in Philadelphia, and commenced what 
proved to be the business of his lite. His 
uncle was a grain and flour merchant. After 
a few years Mr. Dunwoody commenced busi 
ness for himself as a senior member of the 
firm of Dunwoody & Robertson. After ten 
years of practical experience in the Philadel- 
phia flour markets, Mr. Dunwoody came to 
Minneapolis in 1869, and, for a time, repre- 
sented several eastern houses as Hour buyer. 
Milling at Minneapolis was then in a state of 
transition. It was the time when the old- 
fashioned mill stones were giving place to the 
modern steel rollers and the middlings purifier. 
Willi keen perception Mr. Dunwoody saw that 
a greal advance in the milling business was 
at hand, and in 1871 he embarked as a member 
of the firm of Tiffany. Dunwoody & Com 
pany. He was also a member of the firm 
of II. Harrow & Company, and the busi 
ness of both concerns was under his per- 
sonal management. Early in his career 
as a Minneapolis miller Mr. Dunwoody 
distinguished himself among his associates by 
devising and organizing the Minneapolis 
Millers' Association, which was for a long time 
a most important organization, its object being 
co-operation in the purchase of wheat through- 
oul the Northwest. It had an important part 
in the building up of the Minneapolis milling 
business. Its work was discontinued when the 
general establishment of elevators and the 
development of the Minneapolis wheat market 
made it no longer necessary for the millers to 
work in cooperation in buying their wheat. 
Another important work which Mr. Dun 
woody early attempted was that of arranging 
for the direct exportation of Hour. It had 
been the custom to sell through brokers and 
middle-men of the Atlantic seaports. In 
ls~7 Governor C. < '. Washburn conceived the 
idea of introducing spring wheat Hour in the 
markets of the United Kingdom by direct ship 
men! from the mills, and in this he was 
heartily seconded by Mr. Dunwoody. Winn 
other millers wore solicited to co-operate in 



% M^ 




Av£X>. 




I'.KHiKAI'HV OF MINNESOTA. 



2 33 



such a project, they promptly declined, offering 
as a reason that nothing could be accom- 
plished, and that the money so expended 
would be 'thrown away. Governor Washburn 
was not in the least discouraged by this posi- 
lion of his neighbors and very soon arranged 
with Mr. Dunwoody to make a trip to Europe 
in furtherance of the idea of building up a 
direct exporting business. In November, 1877, 
Mr. Dunwoody went to England, and, though 
he met with a most determined opposition, 
succeeded in arranging for the direct export 
of flour from Minneapolis, a custom which has 
since continued without interruption. Shortly 
after the great mill explosion of 1878, Gover- 
nor C. C. Washburn induced Mr. Dunwoody to 
join him in a milling partnership with the late 
John Crosby, and Charles J. Martin. The firm 
thus formed, Washburn, Crosby & Company, 
continued for many years, and was finally suc- 
ceeded by the Washburn-Crosby Company. 
Since Mr. Dunwoody's connection with the 
Washburn mills, in 1870. he lias been unin- 
terruptedly identified with the conduct of Ibis 
famous group of mills. It was natural that 
Mr. Dunwoody, as a prominent miller, should 
take a large interest in the management of 
elevators. He has invested largely in elevator 
properties, and was one of the organizers of 
the St. Anthony & Dakota Elevator Company, 
of which he is president; the St. Anthony 
Elevator Company, and the Duluth Elevator 
Company, being vice-president of these com- 
panies. In addition to these Mr. Dunwoody 
holds other important interests, and is con- 
nected with a number of the strongest financial 
institutions of Minneapolis. He is vice-presi- 
dent of the Northwestern National Dank, a 
director of the Minneapolis Trust Company, 
and vice-president of the Washburn-Crosby 
Company. Mr. Dunwoody is a man of large 
means, and has been actively identified with 
many enterprises calculated to benefit the 
whole Northwest, as well as the city in 
which he resides. Before coming to Minne- 
apolis, he married Miss Kate L. Patten, 
the daughter of John W. ratten, a prom- 
inent merchant of Philadelphia. Mr. Dun- 
woodv's refined tastes have been grati 



fled in late years by extensive travel. He has 
spent much time abroad, and delights, above 
all things, to escape from the cares of business 
into the open country with dog and gun. 
He is a model citizen, enterprising, methodical 
and painstaking in business; he is unassum- 
ing, genial and affable in private life, but of a 
retiring disposition. He has cultivated liter- 
ary and artistic taste, and enjoys refined social 
intercourse. 



LLEWELLYN CHRISTIAN. 

Mr. Christian, who has been long and 
prominently connected with the great mill- 
ing interests of Minneapolis and Minne- 
sota, was born in Wetumpka county. Ala- 
bama, June 10, 1841. He is a son of 
John Christian, a native of New York, and 
the maiden name of his mother was Susan 
Weeks. She was born in Wilmington, North 
Carolina. In his early childhood Mr. Chris- 
tian's parents removed from Alabama to Wil- 
mington, North Carolina, and in 1840 came to 
Geneva, Wisconsin, then practically on the 
northwestern frontier. In 1854 he was sent to 
Chicago, and was at school in that city for 
four years. He then went to New York City, 
and there remained for about fourteen years. 
Mr. Christian has been connected with Minne- 
sota milling interests since 1872. In that year 
he came to Minneapolis and became a member 
of the firm of Christian, Day & Company, 
which operated the Zenith mill. In 1874 he 
entered into partnership with his two brothers 
and C. C. Washburn, forming the firm of J. A. 
Christian & Company, proprietors of the 
Washburn mills. The company continued to 
operate these mills until the noted explosion of 
the Washburn "A" mill in 1S78. Subsequently 
he was connected with the Tettit mill as a 
member of the linn of Pettit, Christian & 
Company. In 1870, in company with his 
brothers and C. M. Hardenburgh, he built the 
Crown Holler Flouring Mills, and was con- 
nected with their operations until the mills 
were sold to the Northwestern Consolidated 
Milling Company in 1801. After the sale 



J 34 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



of his flouring mill interests in Minneap- 
olis, Mr. Christian and Mr. C. E. French 
bought a mill at Shake-pee, Minnesota, 
which they are still operating in connection 
with a grain commission business. No other 
man is better informed on the flouring mill 
industry and the grain interests of the North- 
west than .Mr. Christian, lb- is regarded as an 
authority on wheat and Hour production in 
the Northwest, lb- made two extensive tours 
of the Old World, mainly in search of informa- 
tion concerning modes, methods and improve- 
ments in milling, and has long been a student 
and investigator of the subject. As a citizen 
of Minneapolis, loyal to the interests of the 
city, he is prominent and influential. He is a 
member of St. Mark's Episcopal church, in 
which he has been a vestryman for several 
years. In 1874 he married Miss E. D. French, 
of his childhood home. Wilmington, North 
Carolina. They have no children living. .Mr. 
and Mrs. Christian have a tine residence at the 
corner of Fifth avenue and Eighth street, 
which is one of the most attractive places in 
the down-town district. They also have a 
beautiful summer home on the shore of Lake 
Minnetonka, and are well known and popular 
members of society. 



ROME G. BROWN. 



Rome G. Brown is a native of the Green 
Mountain State, and was born at Montpelier, 
June 15, 18fi2. His parents were Andrew 
Chandler and Lucia A. (Green) Brown. He 
was educated at Harvard University, gradua- 
ting from that institution in 1884. He after- 
wards entered the office of Hon. Benjamin F. 
Fifield, of Montpelier, and studied law with 
him for three years. The Supreme Court of 
Vermont then admitted him to I he bar as an 
"attorney and counsellor at law and solicitor 
in chancery." This was on the 24th of Octo- 
ber, 1887. Less than two months later, De- 
cember 7, 1887. he went west, locating in 
Minneapolis, which city has been his home 
ever since. He at once entered the law office 
of Benton & Roberts, composed of Reuben 



C. Benton and William P. Roberts, at that time 
a well known law firm of Minneapolis. Feb- 
ruary 9, 1888, he was admitted to practice in 
the courts of Minnesota. On the first of -Ian 
nary, 1890, he went into partnership with 
Messrs. Benton and Roberts, the name- of the 
firm becoming Benton, Roberts & Brown. 
The partnership continued for five years, the 
dissolution being occasioned by the death of 
Colonel Benton, January •">, 1895, since which 
time he has continued in practice alone. < >n 
the 27th of May, 1895, he was admitted to 
practice in the United States Supreme Court. 
Mr. Brown's practice has been general for the 
most part, although he has been attorney for 
many business interests and corporations, in- 
cluding the Great Northern Railway. He has 
been, and still is, extensively engaged in legal 
controversies involving questions of water 
powers and water rights in lakes and streams. 
He is the attorney of the two companies which 
control the entire water power of the Missis 
si|i]ii at Minneapolis, viz., the St. Anthony 
Falls Water Power Company and the Minne- 
apolis Mill Company. He is also the legal 
representative of the Crookston Water Works 
Power and Light Company, the Grand Forks 
Gas and Electric Company, the Minneapolis 
Tribune, and other commercial and manufac- 
turing concerns. On the 25th of May, 1888, 
Mr. Brown was united in marriage at Marsh- 
field, Vermont, to Miss Mary Lee Hollister, 
daughter of Samuel D. and Flora (Coburn) 
Hollister. Mr. and Mrs. Brown have two chil- 
dren. Edwin Chandler, born July 8, 1891, and 
Dorothv. born July 19, 189(5. 



JAMES H BAKER. 



Gen. dames Ileaton Baker was born in 
Monroe. Butler county, ' Ohio, May ('.. 1829. 
lie is the son id' Rev. Henry and Hannah 
(Heaton) Baker. His father was a Methodist 
preacher and a physician; a gentleman of good 
literary attainments, who died at Memphis. 
Tennessee, in 1864, while serving as chaplain 
ot ;i regiment in the Civil War. His great 
grandfather, William Baker, served in the 




Th& antury Puttishitiy & Lynn imj Co Ctticaytx 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



235 



Revolutionary War under Washington. On 
1 lie maternal side, his great-grandfather, Da- 
vid Heaton, fought for American independ- 
ence in the battles of Germantown, Princeton, 
Trenton and others, and Ins grandfather, 
James Heaton, was a quartermaster, serving 
with General Harrison in the War of 1812-15. 
When James was about two years old (he fam- 
ily moved to Lebanon, in the adjoining county, 
where, in due time, he prepared for college, 
entering the Wesleyan University at Dela- 
ware, Ohio, in 1847. He graduated in 1852, 
receiving the Latin honors of his rlass for su- 
perior scholarship. He then engaged in teach- 
ing, and was for a short time at the head of a 
female seminary in Richmond, Indiana. In 
1853 Mr. Laker purchased the Sciota Gazette 
at Chillicothe, one of the oldest newspapers in 
Ohio. On the organization of the Republican 
party, his paper became its champion, and his 
writings contributed materially to the growth 
of the infant party in southern Ohio. In ap- 
preciation of his services lie was nominated 
as the Republican candidate for Secretary of 
State, Hon. Salmon P. Chase heading the 
ticket; the two canvassed the State together, 
winning at the October election. At the expi- 
ration of his term of office, in 1S">7. Mr. Baker 
came to Minnesota and settled in Line Earth 
county, near Mankato. The following year he 
was the Republican candidate for Secretary of 
State for the State of Minnesota, and was 
elected. He was re-elected and was still serv- 
ing as Secretary of State when the Civil War 
broke out at the South. Feeling it was his 
duty to go into the military service, he re- 
signed, enlisted and received a colonel's com 
mission from Governor Ramsey. He took 
command of the Tenth Minnesota Infantry, and 
served under General Sibley in the campaign 
of 1862 and 1863, against the Sioux Indians. 
Colonel Baker was in command of the soldiers 
at the time of the execution of the thirty eight 
condemned Indians at Mankato, December 2<>, 
IstJL'. After the Indian troubles Colonel Laker 
was ordered to the South and reported at SI. 
Louis, Missouri, October 10, 1S(;:;. and was as- 
signed to that post by General Schofleld, but 
his command was soon enlarged to that of a 



district. He was subsequently appointed pro- 
vost marshal of the department of Mis 
souri by Secretary Stanton, and in that im- 
portant position lie served until the close of 
the war. For his fidelity in this important 
trust, which virtually made him military go\ 
ernor of Missouri, he was brevetted brigadier 
general of volunteers. Peace being restored, 
General Laker was mustered out of service, 
November 31, 1865, and was appointed register 
of the consolidated land offices at Boonville, 
Missouri, which office he resigned at the end 
of two years. He returned to his farm in Line 
Earth county, intending to enjoy the quiet of 
rural life. In 1S71 President Grant tendered 
him the office of commissioner of pensions, 
and he entered upon the duties of that impor- 
tant office June 1, of that year. Through his 
instrumentality the pension laws, formerly 
scattered through different volumes of the 
statutes, were compiled into one law and very 
much simplified. A tier serving four years 
with great credit to himself in the faithful and 
able discharge of his duties, and to the satis- 
faction of the department, he resigned. In 
1875 General Grant tendered him the office of 
Surveyor General of the State of Minnesota, 
which office he accepted and served for four 
years, after which he retired to his farm in 
Line Earth county. While holding the office 
of Surveyor General and living at Mankato. 
General Laker wrote many letters for publica- 
tion, which attracted wide attention and con- 
tributed more largely than any other influence 
to bring into notice the north shore of Lake 
Superior. In 1881 General Baker was elected 
by the people of Minnesota as railway com- 
missioner, to succeed ex-Governor Marshall, 
and was subsequently re-elected to the same 
position. General Baker is an active member 
of the Minnesota Historical Society, and has 
contributed much valuable material to its 
archives. Among his mosl important works are 
the "History of Lake Superior" and the discov- 
ery of "The Sources of the Mississippi," an able 
and carefully prepared paper, published in 
1SS7. He also wrote (lie "History of the Min- 
nesota Valley," an interesting and valuable 
contribution to the history of Minnesota, pub- 



236 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Iished January 10, 1878". He was the first to 
bring to light, by a series of public letters, the 
great mineral resources of northeastern 
Minnesota, and was the author of several pa- 
pers on the International Line. As a member 
of the Loyal Legion, of which he was com- 
mander in 1898-9, he contributed many impor- 
tant papers to their annual publications. His 
essay on the "Military Career and Personal 
Character of Ulysses S. Grant" attracted much 
attention, and liis series of papers on the 
Character of Governor H. H. Sibley were in- 
teresting and valuable. Besides his published 
works, General Baker has prepared and de- 
livered many addresses. lie was sent by Gov- 
ernor Hubbard to New Orleans to deliver the 
address on "Minnesota Day" at the Interna- 
tional Exposition, March 21, 1885, which ad- 
dress was published in full in many of the 
leading papers. Another notable address was 
delivered by him at the annual reunion of the 
Old Settlers of LeSueur county. It is no more 
than the truth to state that General Baker 
lias been called upon to deliver a greater num- 
ber of memorial addresses and Fourth of July 
orations than any other man in the State of 
Minnesota. He has always been a liberal con- 
tributor to the newspaper and periodical press, 
treating on literary subjects, and is an elegant 
and vigorous writer. As a public speaker he 
is brilliant and forceful. In personal appear- 
ance General Baker is about six feet in height 
and symmetrical in proportion. He moves 
with a quick soldierly step, indicative of his 
character. Courteous in demeanor and affable 
in conversation, he gives close attention to the 
minutest detail when business is introduced. 
He is somewhat incisive in his speech and im- 
pulsive in action. His head is small and well- 
proportioned and is held firmly erect. His 
quick moving hazel eyes betoken energy, 
and his countenance, when animated, indicates 
great intelligence. In repose his face has a 
quiet, thoughtful, scholarly appearance. As a 
valued friend of freedom the name of General 
Baker must ever be honored among those 
who have deserved well of their country. 
General Baker was married September 25. 
1S52, to Miss Rose L. Thurston, daughter of 



Reuben H. Thurston, then of Delaware, Ohio, 
and later of Mankato. She died in Washing- 
ton. March 20. 1873, leaving two children — Dr. 
Arthur H. Baker, who died September, 1 s! > 7 . 
at the age of forty-four years, while occupying 
a position in the Treasury Department at 
Washington, D. ('.; and Harry E. Baker, now 
residing in Baker City, Oregon. December 23, 
1879, General Baker married his present wife. 
Miss Zula Bartlett, of Mankato. daughter of 
George W. Bartlett of Paris. Illinois. She is a 
graduate of the Normal School and was for- 
merly a teacher in the public schools of Man- 
kato. Her great-great-grandfather was one of 
Hie signers of the Declaration of Independence 
— his name being the second on that document. 
They have one son, James Henry Baker, a stu 
dent in the Normal School at Mankato. 



WILLIAM BIERBAFER. 

Capt. William Bierbauer was born in Ein- 
selthum, Bavaria, February 26, 1826, and died 
in Mankato, Minnesota, November 30, 1893. 
He was educated in the common schools of his 
native country and served three years in the 
Bavarian army. He then became involved in 
the German Revolution of 1S4S, with which 
Carl Schurz, General Siegel and other eminent 
German patriots were identified. After the 
failure of that enterprise he was forced to 
leave his native country and came to America 
by the way of Switzerland and France, em- 
barking at Havre and landing in New York in 
is 111. He was by trade a cabinetmaker, and 
lie soon found employment in the furniture de- 
partment of the car shops in New York City. 
He afterwards joined his elder brother, who 
was in tin brewery business in Seneca Falls, 
and later in Utica, New York, where he re- 
mained until 1855, when he went to Milwau- 
kee, Wisconsin, and worked in Philip Best's 
Brewery. In 185(5 he came to Mankato and. 
in company with his brother Jacob, started a 
brewery, commencing on a small scale, and 
gradually increasing as the business war- 
ranted. In ISO:? Jacob Bierbauer with- 
drew from the firm and his brother con- 




1 ¥- 








MUo^ ~Q. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



'-37 



tinued the business. In 1862 he changed 
his location 1 «» the present site and laid the 
foundation for the magnificent plant, now one 
of the best breweries in the State of Minnesota. 
In 1862, when the Sioux massacre occurred 
and the neighboring village of New Ulm was 
assailed, Mr. Bierbauer was among the first to 
volunteer his services. He had already gone 
to St. Paul to get his commission as captain, 
intending to raise a company to go South to 
take part in the Civil War then progressing. 
When the news came of the Indian outbreak, 
Captain Bierbauer returned to Mankato, im- 
mediately raised a company and proceeded to 
New Ulm, where he rendered valiant service 
through the week's seige and defense, under 
the command of Col. Charles E. Flandrau. Of 
the part Captain Bierbauer took in the battle 
of Now Ulm, his commander, Charles E. Flan- 
drau, says: 

"Captain Bierbauer and his gallant company 
were very prominent figures at the battle of 
New Ulm, which was fought August 23, 1862. 
The bravery of Captain Bierbauer was most 
conspicuous and produced the best results. 
During the critical period of the fight, when 
bullets were falling thick and fast from the 
Sioux rifles, I noticed one man, 'solitary and 
alone." and in advance of all others, loading and 
tiring at the Indians, and manfully maintain- 
ing his position. 'We advanced and ascertained 
that it was Captain Bierbauer of Mankato, and 
directing (lie attention of the men to this man- 
ifestation of bravery, they were rallied to as- 
sist in maintaining the position held by the 
Captain. I shall never forget the effect it pro- 
duced on these men, who had been on the run 
a moment before; when they recognized their 
captain in this exposed position, so coolly hold- 
ing his own, it was electrical. The Stale of 
Minnesota owes Captain Bierbauer a debt of 
gratitude, and will ever keep his memory 
green." 

After the battle of New Ulm, Captain Bier- 
bauer organized another company for frontier 
defense, rendering efficient service under Col- 
onel Flandrau in the Southern Minnesota De- 
partment. In his prime, Captain Bierbauer was 
a fine specimen of physical manhood. About 
six feet in height, he was well formed ami 
skilled in athletic sports peculiar to the Turner 



organization. He was a gentleman of excel- 
lent judgment, broad intelligence and with the 
highest sense of integrity and honor. He was 
generous to a fault, and his home was proverb- 
ial for its lavish hospitality. He was public 
spirited, and freely contributed from his means 
to every undertaking and enterprise for the 
public good. Honorable, conscientious and 
truthful, he enjoyed, to a great degree, the 
confidence and esteem of his fellows. In every 
element that combines to make a high-toned, 
courteous gentleman, and a model citizen, 
William Bierbauer was a man worthy of emu- 
lation. Mr. Bierbauer was married in 1858 to 
Louisa Dornberg, daughter of Dr. A. L. Dorn- 
berg of Mankato. They were the parents of 
seven children, six of whom are now living, 
viz.: Albert, Bruno, Rudolph, William, Addie 
and Ella, all residing in Mankato, excepting 
Bruno, who is practicing medicine in Brooklyn, 
New York. 



MICHAEL DORAN. 



Michael Doran, a prominent banker and 
broker of St. Paul, is a native of Ireland, born 
in the County Meath, November 1, 1827. At 
the age of twenty-three he emigrated to Amer- 
ica, locating in the State of New York for a 
vein-, and removing thence to Ohio. Here he 
engaged in agriculture for five years in the 
vicinity of Norwalk. He then made another 
move West, locating this time in Le Sueur 
county, Minnesota, and taking up a tract of 
Government land. He at once interested him- 
self in the affairs of the community with which 
he had cast his lot, and became popular with 
his fellow-townsmen. In the year 1861 he was 
honored with the office of county treasurer, 
and entered upon its duties in March of 1862. 
He was repeatedly re-elected, holding the office 
continuously for a period of eight years. lie 
then, in 1870, formed a partnership with Mr. 
George D. Snow, and entered the banking busi- 
ness under the name of Snow & Doran. This 
concern also operated a mill, grain elevators, 
etc. Mr. Snow did not long survive the initia- 
tion of this enterprise, and for a time the re- 



2 3 8 



P.TOURAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



sponsibilities of the business were thrown on 
Mr. Doran alone. It was not long, however, 
before he associated himself with Mr. E. R. 
Smith, and the firm of Doran & Smith was con- 
tinued until March, 1891, when the partnership 
was dissolved by mutual consent, Mr. Smith 
continuing the business atLeSueur. During the 
time from 1877 to 1891 Mr. Doran bad finan- 
cial interests in St. Paul also. In 1877-7S In- 
invested some capital in a banking and broker- 
age business, owned at that time by Mr. 
Charles A. Morton, and the firm of Morton & 
Doran was formed. This concern continued 
for half a year, wben Mr. Doran purchased the 
entire business, took in Mr. Smith, his partner 
at Le Sueur, and established the firm of M. Do- 
ran & Company. In 1891 Mr. Smith gave place 
to James D., the son of Mr. Doran, who became 
junior member. Mr. Doran is well known and 
respected throughout the business ami politi- 
cal world of Minnesota. He held the office of 
State Senator for several years, having first 
been elected to it in 1871, and being re-elected 
several times. Always a Democrat and a 
strong partisan in polities, he invariably voted 
with his party on political questions, but in 
matters of general legislation he was uniform- 
ly on the side of economy and straightforward- 
ness, and his rigid integrity and honorable 
conduct won for him the respect of his asso- 
ciates. During the latter part of his political 
career he has been looked up to as an authority 
on matters of public moment, and was one of 
the leading spirits in the Senate, although be- 
longing to the party in the minority. Mr. Doran 
was a member of the National Convention at 
Chicago in 18<U, when General McClellan was 
nominated. Since that time, and up to the last 
National Democratic Convention in 1896, he 
has been in attendance at every one. He is a 
strong and intimate friend of President Cleve- 
land, with whose political convictions he is a 
hearty sympathizer, and whom he has firmly 
supported at every convention in which he was 
nominated for the Presidency. Mr. Doran has 
always been a faithful worker in the interests 
of the Democratic party. He was chairman of 
the Democratic State Central Committee of 
Minnesota for six years, from 1882 to 1888. He 



was one of the National committee from 
Minnesota in 1888, and again in 1892. He sent 
his resignation to the committee just before 
the convention in which Bryan and Bewail 
were nominated. His services to his party 
were always unselfishly rendered. His only 
rewards have been the approval of his con- 
science and the satisfaction of seeing his de- 
serving friends attain their wishes and ambi- 
tions. In politics he has done a great deal of 
work for others, not a thing for himself. In 
business he has the reputation of being a man 
of insight and good judgment, and his advice 
is often sought by his confreres. His business 
dealings have been invariably characterized 
by a high sense of integrity, and when once 
his word is given it can always be depended 
upon. Although he has reached the ripe age 
of three-score years and ten, Mr. Doran is still 
well preserved physically and mentally, and 
seems as vigorous and capable as most men in 
their prime. Mr. I). W. Lawler, a well-known 
attorney of St. Paul, says of him: 

"If one were asked to give the impres- 
sion which Mr. Doran creates, one would 
say that it is one of strength, physical 
and mental. To muscular power and a 
rugged physique, is added a quiet and un- 
mistakable air of moral and mental force. 
Killing his entire life he has been engaged 
in business which has required contin- 
uous and great mental application, but he pre- 
serves, at an age which is near the allotted 
span of human life, a strong and active body. 
He asks no odds of younger men. mentally or 
physically. In his great political contests, no 
matter how bitter or prolonged the struggle, 
his splendid physical vitality and well-bal- 
anced temperament preserve him fresh and 
active, while friends and opponents are falling 
by the wayside. His decisions on all matters 
are rapid and complete. He goes straight to 
the point, and there is no trimming or turning 
after his mind has determined on a given line 
of conduct. He has to-day the buoyancy and 
self-confidence of youth, and the unfaltering 
determination of manhood at its best stage. 
The writer has seen much of Mr. Doran in the 
field of public life, and has often beheld and 
admired exhibitions of his iron will and un- 
conquerable spirit. His smile is as genial and 
his face as tranquil in a closely balanced con- 
vention as in one where the vote is unanimous 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



'■39 



in his favor. He has not often met personal 
defeat, but defeat when it has come has not 
depressed his spirits or weakened Ins fighting 
qualities. Mr. Doran's unbending integrity and 
absolute truthfulness are household words in 
Minnesota. He is open and honest with friend 
and foe. Slow to promise, once his word has 
been given, it is never broken. Those who are 
slightly acquainted with him have sometimes 
considered him crusty and abrupt, but those 
who know him best prefer his direct and plain 
'yes' and 'no' to the equivocations and reserva- 
tions of smaller men. Possessed of large 
financial means, his struggles have taught him 
the value of money, but he is generous to all 
worthy objects, not ostentatiously; but pri- 
vately and discreetly. His benefactions are 
bounded by no creed or color, and his name is 
blessed in the homes of the humble and the 
pool'. His grasp of public questions is strong 
and complete. In matters pertaining to Na- 
tional finance, he is a recognized authority. 
It is a matter of common knowledge that dur- 
ing the extra session of Congress, in l.^il'.. Mr. 
Doran was called into frequent consultation 
by Mr. Cleveland and by Mr. Carlisle. Secre- 
tary of the Treasury. His relations with Presi- 
dent Cleveland were more intimate and confi- 
dential than those of any other citizen of 
Minnesota. The President had absolute confi- 
dence iu his judgment and his honor. He knew 
that Michael Doran could not and would not 
deceive him, and he was willing to take Mr. 
Doran's estimate of friend and enemy alike." 

Mi'. Doran was first married while engaged 
in agriculture on his Ohio farm to Miss Ellen 
Brady. She died in 1862. Three years later lie 
was married to Miss Catherine J. O'Grady of 
Le Sueur county, Minnesota. Mr. Doran is the 
father of twelve children, his first wife being 
mother of four, and his second of eight. 



GEORGE L. BUNN. 



Hon. George L. Bunn of St. Paul, Judge of 
the District Court of Ramsey county, was born 
June 25, 1865, at Sparta, Monroe county, Wis- 
consin, lie is a son of Romanzo and Sarah 
(Purdy) Bunn, both parents being natives of 
New York State, and both of English descent. 
Romanzo Bunn emigrated to Wisconsin in the 
early fifties, and became one of the best known 
and most influential lawyers of that State. He 



was a Judge of the Circuit Court from 1868 to 
1877, when he was appointed Judge of the 
United States Circuit Court for the Eastern 
District of Wisconsin, which position he still 
occupies, at the age of seventy years. The 
subject of this sketch was the third of a family 
of five children, who are all living, three broth- 
ers being- lawyers of ability and prominence 
in the profession. George L. received his early 
education in the public schools of his native 
city, and at the age of sixteen entered the 
preparatory department of the University of 
Wisconsin; two years later he entered the 
University proper, graduating from the aca- 
demic course with the degree of A. B. in 1885. 
He then went to La Crosse and studied law in 
the office of J. W. Losey, Esq., until the fall of 
1886, when he returned to Madison and en- 
tered the law office of S. U. I'inney, Esq., of 
that city, and at the same time attended the 
law school of the Wisconsin University, from 
which he graduated in 1888, with the degree 
of LL. B. In September, after his gradua- 
tion, he came to St. Paul and began the prac- 
tice of law. He was appointed Judge of the 
1 Hstrict Court of Ramsey county by Governor 
• lough, January 2, 1897, to fill the vacancy 
caused by the death of Judge Kerr, for the 
term which expired January, 1899. In 1898 
he was nominated by the Democratic county 
convention for re-election to the same office, 
and although the Republican county ticket 
carried the county by a large vote. Judge Bunn 
was re-elected with a larger vote than any 
other candidate for the bench. Judge Bunn 
has never been a politician. His inclinations 
are strongly toward the Democratic doctrines, 
although he did not have full sympathy with 
the Bryan campaign of 1896. He possesses a 
conspicuous natural ability for the position of 
judge. It is frequently said of him, by law- 
yers who have appeared before him, that when 
he first assumed the duties of that position he 
appeared to have all the ease and confidence 
of a man of long experience on the bench. He 
takes responsibility without complaint, and 
decides important questions arising on the 
trial of cases, with despatch and with the 
greatest simplicity. He has unusual ability in 



-4° 



BIOOKAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



discerning points in the cases before him, but 
is patient and considerate in listening to argu- 
ments of counsel. He is remarkably fearless. 
and in cases which involve popular prejudice 
the people as well as the bar always feel con- 
fident thai Judge Bunn will hear the facts and 
determine the law., as ii appeals to his mind, 
uninfluenced by any public clamor. His sense 
of the duty of a judge is so high and so pure 
that no question of personal friendship or at- 
tachmenf ever occurs to him in his consider- 
ation of causes. A prominent judge and lead 
ing lawyer of St. Paul says of Judge Bunn: 

"I have never known a man so absolutely 
free from prejudice. He is so constituted that 
he looks at a case from a legal standpoint, and 
seems to be wholly unable to see it in any other 
way. He is absolutely uninfluenced by feeling 
in the trial of a case. He is prompt, clear, 
decisive, and always courteous." 

Judge Bunn is a member of the Minnesota 
Club, Commercial Club, White Bear Yacht 
Club, and Town and Country Club. 



GEORGE C. STONE. 



George Calvin Stone was bom in Shrews- 
bury. Worcester county, Massachusetts, No- 
vember 11, 1822, the son of Calvin R. and 
Susan (Fitch) Stone. His ancestors on both 
sides were of English extraction. The father 
was a native of .Massachusetts, whose fore- 
fathers settled in Cambridge, some time in 
1600. His mother was also a native of Massa- 
chusetts, whose family were early settlers of 
Salem. The father was married, and re- 
sided in Shrewsbury. Massachusetts, where 
he kept for a number of years a general 
store. George C. was the eldest of a fam- 
ily of live children, only two of whom are 
now living. lie attended the common schools 
of his native place until he was four- 
teen years of age. In 18:'.f> he went with 
his father to St. Louis, Missouri, where 
he attended school one term in Kemper Col- 
lege. His father, who was then in business 
in St. Louis, lost his life in April. 1838, leav- 
ing his family to provide for themselves. He 



was a passenger on the ill-fated steamboat 
"Moselle," which was blown up at Cincinnati. 
Ohio. George C. entered the store of Alonzo 
Child as a salesman, where he remained until 
1845, when he went to Blooniington. Iowa 
mow Muscatine), and commenced business for 
himself in general merchandising and in a 
pork jiacking establishment. Later on he or- 
ganized the private bank of Green & Stone, 
and still later was connected with the Slate 
Hank of Iowa, with branches at Washington 
and at Muscatine. He built up an extensive 
business and accumulated, for those days, 
quite a large fortune. On account of the un- 
certain state of the country at the time of the 
beginning of the Rebellion, and the conse- 
quent unstable condition of financial affairs, 
Mr. Si one suspended his banking operations in 
1861 and removed to Chicago. For some years 
thereafter he was located for different periods 
in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, but 
was engaged in no regular business. He 
went to Duluth in 1869, where he located, 
and actively engaged in the building up 
of that city. He was connected with the pri- 
vate banking house of George B. Sargent, and 
afterwards was with the First National Bank 
of Duluth. When the failure of Jay Cook oc- 
curred, Duluth was for a time paralyzed and 
business was dead. Mr. Stone, with others, lost 
heavily, and his resources were soon exhausted, 
lie then engaged in investigating the iron 
deposits of .Minnesota, and made many valu- 
able discoveries. After several years he sue 
ceeded in interesting in the properties Char- 
lemagne Tower, a very wealthy capitalist of 
Philadelphia, who sent his son, Charlemagne 
Tower. Jr. (now United States ambassador at 
St. Petersburg, Russia), to Duluth in 1881. lie 
assisted Mr. Stone in the development and 
opening up of the iron industry of Northern 
Minnesota until 1887. They organized the 
Minnesota Iron Company, and built the 
Duluth & Iron Range Railway. In June. 1887, 
they sold out to the H. H. Porter Syndicate, 
and Mr. Tower's profits in this enterprise were 
over $3,000,000. Mr. Stone also cleared a 
handsome competency. Since then he has been 
engaged in no regular business, but has spent 






'sZ^zy)A^^<u7^^Z^\ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Hi 



his time in the care of his private affairs and 
in extensive travel. In 1880, he removed from 
Dnlnth to St. Paul, where he has since re- 
sided. Originally a Whig, when the Republi- 
can Party was formed, he became a Repub- 
lican, and has been with that party ever 
since. Mr. Stone was married at Shrewsbury, 
Massachusetts, September 4. 1s4'.i, to Kate M. 
Baldwin, daughter of Benry Baldwin. She 
died in St. Paul, October !), 1892, leaving two 
daughters: Chara P.., now Mrs. T. L. Blood, 
of St. Paul, and Ella (!.. now Mrs. \Y. A. 
Hardenbergh, of St. Paul. 



JOHN FARRINGTON. 

This well known pioneer of the Northwest, 
who has been a citizen of St. Paul and of Min- 
nesota for practically half a century — who has 
helped to build up his adopted town from a 
straggling frontier village to a city of metro 
politan proportions — whose career has been 
one of honor and usefulness — and who is now 
passing the evening of his life amid the scenes 
and sites of his principal labors, surrounded by 
dear and old friends and all that makes life 
pleasant — is now in his seventy-third year, 
having been born in the County Galway, Ire- 
land, in ISL'T. Nearly all of his life lias, how- 
ever, been spent in the United States. His 
parents brought him to this country when he 
was hut seven years of age. He was reared 
to young manhood in the city of New Orleans 
and was there trained to mercantile pursuits." 
In 1849, at the age of twenty-two. he went to 
Chicago, where he remained for one year. 
and then decided to go to St. Paul, the 
capital of the young Territory of Minnesota. 
At that day there were no railroads in the 
Northwest and the best and most comfortable 
route from Chicago to St. Paul was via the 
Illinois canal and Illinois river to St. Louis, 
and thence up the Mississippi, by steamboat, 
and this was the road chosen by the young and 
adventurous merchant. En route, at St. Louis. 
he purchased a stock of goods, designed for 
the trade of the new country towards which 
he was traveling. Mr. Farrington arrived in 



St. Paul dune 17. L850, and has resided there 
continuously ever since. Upon his arrival he 
established a general store and soon acquired 
a good trade. The following year he erected 
and occupied the first brick si ore building in 
St. Paul. The second story of this building 
was used by Oapt. Alexander Wilkin, then 
Secretary of the Territory, as his office, and 
the third story was occupied by the printing 
office of the Minnesota Times. The building, 
which stood on ^^'est Third street, near Frank 
lin, was subsequently burned. In 1853, when 
Hon. Henry M. Rice was elected delegate to 
Congress, Mr. Farrington succeeded him in the 
firm of Rice, Culver & Lowry, which then be- 
came Culver, Farrington & Company. The 
business of this firm, which was very exten- 
sive, was that of dealing in furs and Indian 
supplies. For several years it practically con- 
trolled the fur trade of the Northwest. It 
owned numerous trading posts among the 
Indian tribes — the Winnebagoes, Sioux and 
Chippewas — and also had establishments in 
the Hudson Bay territory under the manage 
nieiit of the late Norman \Y. Kittson. All of 
these posts were supplied from the firm's head- 
quarters in St. Paul. A partial description of 
the method of operations of the old trading 
firm of Culver, Farrington & Company may 
nut be out of place iii this connection. The 
furs in which they dealt were brought from 
the interior in oxcarts, which were usually 
driven by half-breed Indians in the company's 
service. These carts were made entirely of 
wood, no bolts, nails, or other iron materials 
being used in their const ruction. Each cart 
was drawn by a single ox — with a harness of 
strips of Buffalo hide — and would carry about 
eight hundred pounds. Long trains of these 
carts, sometimes numbering from 500 to S00, 
came in from the west and north in single 
file, each ox tied to the cart in front of him. 
with usually one driver to every four carts. 
These carts usually made the trip to St. Paul 
laden with furs and skins, once a year, carry- 
ing back on the return trip merchandise for 
the use of the trading posts. Besides the carts 
owned by the company, there were others 
which belonged to the "free traders," or fur 



242 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



dealers who had posts of their own and who 
sent furs to Culver, Farrington & Company, 
to exchange for goods. Some of these inde- 
pendent traders had posts at remote distances 
from St. Paul, and did not send down their 
carts oftener than once in two years. At Fort 
Garry (Winnipeg), a distance of five hundred 
miles from St. Paul, the company had a dis- 
tributing point from which the more remote 
posts in the interior were supplied. The trail 
from St. Paul to Fort Garry ran a great pari 
of the way through the country of the Sioux 
Indians, who would raid any train which was 
not well protected. The trains were always 
corralled at night — the carts arranged in a cir- 
cle, with the oxen inside, and scouts or pickets 
constantly on watch. The journeys of the cart 
trains were therefore not only toilsome but 
perilous. The trains usually made their first 
appearance in St. Paul about June 1, and con- 
tinued to arrive until August. During that 
period the town was very lively and business 
was brisk. This condition lasted until in 1862, 
when the great Sioux outbreak occurred" and 
stopped all travel across the State, except un- 
der the protection of a sufficient military es- 
cort. In the early years of Minnesota, the 
productions of the country were very limited. 
Nearly all of the butter, eggs, pork, flour and 
grain consumed in the Territory was brought 
in from the towns lower down the Mississippi. 
Put there was plenty of game, tisli and wild 
fruit, and the people made the best of the situ- 
ation and were content. Trade conditions were 
fairly good. In addition to the patronage of 
the white settlers of the country. Culver, Far 
rington & Company had for customers the 
Sioux, Chippewas and Winnebagoes up to 
1803. Then the Sioux outbreak having oc- 
curred and the people becoming distrustful of 
the Winnebagoes, these two tribes were re- 
moved from the State and the Chippewas of 
the Mississippi were established on the White 
Earth reservation. As a matter of history, it 
may be stated that the trade of Culver, Far- 
rington & Company in Canada was at the time 
very important. It was stopped, however, when 
Congress placed a high tariff upon furs from 
the Hudson Pay country, and the trade then 



soughl a market in Montreal and London. Cul 
vei- & Farrington then engaged largely in the 
real estate business, and so continued until the 
death of .Mr. Culver, in 1878. No other man 
has taken a more active interest in St. Paul 
enterprises than John Farrington. In early 
days he was a stockholder in steamboat and 
railroad companies, invested largely in the 
first telegraph line, and aided largely in build- 
ing the .Metropolitan and other hotels. His 
last building operation was the erection of the 
well known apartment house on Pleasant ave- 
nue called Farrington Place. For eight years 
he was the president of the Farmers and 
Mechanics' Bank, which failed in 1877, during 
a period of general business depression. By 
the sacrifice of large interests in valuable real 
estate Mr. Farrington wound up the bank's 
affairs in ninety days, and in such a manner 
that its indebtedness was paid in full without 
the loss of a dollar to the depositors. Mr. Far- 
rington has never held an elective office and 
was never a candidate or an aspirant for one. 
He was, however, appointed a member of the 
board of public works and served seven years, 
four years of which time he was president of 
the board. These were the days of the city's 
history when — to use the expression of Henry 
M. Pice — the emoluments for members of that 
board were "sixteen dollars in cash and a 
million in kicks!" In President Cleveland's 
first administration Mr. Farrington was ap- 
pointed collector of customs for the port of 
St. Paul, and held the position four years. At 
. the close of his term he retired from all active 
business, public or private. In 1858, when the 
late Gen. H. H. Sibley was Governor of the 
State, he appointed Mr. Farrington a member 
of his military staff, with the rank of lieuten- 
ant colonel. The other members were John 
S. Prince, George L. Becker and Dr. A. G. 
Brisbine. In 1804 he was appointed on the 
staff of General Dana, who was in com- 
mand of the Union Army in Texas. In 
lSi)!). Mr. Farrington married a daughter 
of Mai. W. J. Cnllen, at one time superintend- 
ent of Indian affairs for the Northwest. She 
died in 180"). and some years afterwards he 
was again married, this time to the widow of 






\ 



'm 





dAMcf ,/, 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



-'43 



Capt. Marcus Waterford McCracken, who 
served as quartermaster on the staff to Maj. 
Gen. John M. Schofield during the War of the 
Rebellion. She was a daughter of Miron Les- 
lie, one of the best known and most distin- 
guished lawyers of St. Louis. Mr. Farrington 
lias been the father of seven children, only 
three of whom are now living, viz.: William 
C. Farrington, of Buffalo, New York, president 
of the Great Northern Elevator system and 
vice-president of the Northern Steamship 
Company; Mrs. J. L. Snapp, and Miss Kather- 
ine Farrington, of St. Paul. 



DAVID T. ADAMS. 



David T. Adams, of Duluth, the well known 
mining expert, was born in Rockford, Illinois, 
September 6, 1859. The expression, "a self- 
made man,'* is often carelessly used, but as 
applied to Mr. Adams, it has a peculiarly em- 
phatic meaning. By the death of his father. 
Muses Adams, his family was left in an unfor- 
tunate situation, with limited means, and in 
straitened circumstances generally. The. wid- 
ow, Mrs. Jane Adams, was unable to support 
her seven fatherless children, ami they were 
compelled to separate and find homes in 
strange households. The boy, David, was nine 
years old when he was east upon the world, 
and he has made himself the man he is. Pass- 
ing over the boyhood and early youth of his 
life — a career of privation, hard work, and 
rugged experience throughout, but adorned 
with honor and embellished with unwearied 
effort and an honorable ambition to better his 
condition — it may be stated that at the age of 
twenty he came from Oshkosh. Wisconsin, to 
the mining regions of the upper peninsula of 
Michigan, and engaged in exploring for iron 
ore iii the vicinity of Crystal Falls and Iron 
river. In this work he derived but little profit 
in money at the time, but acquired a valuable 
experience. Two years later he left the Michi- 
gan iron fields lor northeastern Minnesota, and 
on June 20, 1882, arrived at Duluth, which 
city has since been his home. No other man 
has been so personally prominent in discover- 



ing and bringing to development the great iron 
wealth of northeastern Minnesota as Mr. 
Adams. His firsl investigation in this quarter 
was in the old Vermillion range, and he was 
one of the pioneer explorers of this region. At 
first he was not successful, but he was not dis- 
couraged, and kept steadily at work in study 
ing and investigating the situation. In 1801, 
as the result of his researches, he conceived 
the idea of the existence of a vast iron range, 
south of and paralleling the Vermillion, and 
he proceeded to explore what is now known 
to the world as the great Mesaba range. In 
1894 he compiled and published the first map 
of this great range. The details of this map 
were obtained from actual experience and ex- 
amination in the field, and the map itself is 
still regarded as one of the most accurate and 
best of the kind ever published. Mr. Adams 
was the first to promulgate the theory that 
the Mesaba iron range was, at one time, the 
slime line of a now extinct sea, and his theory 
is confirmed by certain established geological 
facts. In the development of the iron mines 
of Minnesota Mr. Adams has signally distin- 
guished himself. He has developed and pro- 
moted the interests of the following well 
known mines, viz.: the Kanawha, the Cincin- 
nati, the Adams, the Fowler, the Cloquet, the 
Fayoll, the Lone .lack, the Spruce and many 
others in the Minnesota and other iron ranges. 
As an authority in Minnesota mining he is 
recognized as without a superior, and his opin- 
ions are often asked and his judgment fre 

quently sought. He has 1 n a town builder, 

too. and the sites of the towns of Virginia and 
Eveleth were originally laid out and platted by 
him. Mr. Adams has not only achieved an 
honorable and enviable distinction, but he has 
acquired a substantial competency as well. His 
persona] record has never been impeached, and 
his financial standing is high. "A good name 
is better than riches." but a satisfactory bank 
account is not without its advantages. The 
career of Mr. Adams is one of many that may 
be considered with profit by American boys 
now battling with adversities and struggling 
almost without hope in this land of opportuni 
ties and possibilities. Mr. Adams was married 



^44 



I'.IOORAIMIY OF MINNESOTA. 



in the fall of L883 to Miss Mary Wetterbeck, 
of Winona, Minnesota. They have one child, a 
daughter, named Lucilla Adams. Mr. Adams 
is a member of the order of Foresters and of 
i he Elks, ami is a Republican in politics. Moses 
Adams, the father of David T. Adams, was a 
Canadian by birth, lie came from Canada to 
the United Siaies in L840 and settled in the 
State of New York. Several years later lie 
came lo the West, and lived for a time ai 
Rockford, Illinois. In 186] lie removed to 
Chilton. Wisconsin, and in the fall of 1865 lo 
Menasha, in the same State, where he died in 
the fall of 1867. lie -was a butcher by trade, 
lmi engaged in farming in Illinois, and had 
been so engaged in Wisconsin for two years 
when he died. 



JOSIAH I». ENSIGN. 

Judge Josiah Davis Ensign, who for ten 
years has been on (he Duluth District Bench, 
and is now senior Judge of the district, has 
been a resident of the city of Duluth for thirty 
years, lie was born in Erie county, New York, 
May 14. 1s:;:',. His father was R. S. Ensign, 
who died in 1896, and his mother is at this 
writing still living at the age of eighty-nine. 
One of his great-grandfathers was a soldier in 
the War of the Revolution, ami he conies of 
an old American family. His education was 
obtained in the common schools of northeast 
ern Ohio and by a three years' attendance at 
Farmington and Orwell academies, in Ohio. 
When he was only a little past Hie age of fif- 
teen he began teaching scl I. and taughl dur- 
ing every winter and frequently in summer for 
-.mii rears, meantime engaging, at intervals, 
in the study of law. When he was twenty 
two years of age he was appointed auditor of 
Ashtabula county. Ohio, lo serve out an unex- 
pired term. In lSoT he was admitted to the 
bar. but before commencing the practice he 

was elected clerk id' I lie Ciniuion Pleas and 
District Courts of Ashtabula county, lie held 
this office for six years, and after the expira- 
tion of his second term he commenced the 
practice of ids profession at Jefferson, the 



county seal of that county, in partnership with 
an old school-mate, Stephen A. Northway, who 
was subsequently for eight years a member of 
< 'ongress. Be continued in the practice at -let' 
ferson until 1868. Upon the death of his wife. 
September 4. 1868, he removed to Rochester. 
Minnesota, where he had previously spent two 
summers with his companion for the benefil 
of her health. He has ever since been a resi- 
dent of Minnesota. In 1869 he made a brief 
visit to Duluth. then a place with the propor 
lions and character of a frontier village, but 
remained only a few weeks. Not long after- 
ward he returned, but not with the purpose of 
becoming a permanent resident. The owners 
of I'll! acres of land in Duluth desired to 
change the plat to conform to the other 
portions of the city, and they selected 
Judge Ensign to receive Hie title of the 
entire tract, to replat the same and to dis- 
tribute and convey the lots to the owners 
according to the new plat. This work occn 
pied his time for more than a year, and in the 
meantime he also engaged in the practice of 
his profession. In 1870 he was elected county 
attorney of St. Louis county and held the 
office for two years, continuing in the general 
practice during his term. In 1872 he associated 
himself in partnership with Hon. O. 1'. Stearns, 
and this relation continued until 1X74. when 
Judge Stearns was appointed to the bench of 
the Eleventh Judicial District. He then con- 
tinued the practice alone for some time, finally 
forming a partnership with Mr. Daniel (i. 
Cash, under the firm name of Ensign & Cash. 
January 1. 1886, by the admission of Mr. John 
(!. Williams, the firm name became Ensign, 
Cash & Williams. In 1889 he was appointed 
Judge of the District Court. He was duly 

elected to the position ill 1890, and reelected 

in 1896, and is now senior Judge of the Dis- 
trict. His present term will expire by limita- 
tion in 1903. Of Judge Ensign's character as a 
lawyer and of his career as a judge, one of his 
old friends and former law partners says: 

"As a lawyer he was exceptionally well qual- 
ified and equipped. Gifted with a legal mind. 
original in thought and expression, with an 
intense love for his profession, and industrious 




\ 




BIOOKAP1IY OF MINNESOTA. 



2 45 



;iiid methodical in his business habits, lie de- 
voted himself assiduously to the study and 
practice of his profession, and was well pre- 
pared and confident in every emergency. It 
was always a pleasure to listen l<> his strong, 
eloquent and logical arguments. Since his ele- 
vation to the bench, his uniformly patient and 
courteous treatment of the bar and his careful 
and conscientious consideration and decision 
of all matters brought before him, have won 
the universal commendation of all who have 
come in contact with him." 

Judge Ensign has always been an active ami 
public spirited citizen of Duluth, and al times 
prominent in its public and official affairs. lie 
served on the school board for seven years, 
was for eight years a member of the city coun- 
cil, aud was mayor of the city for two terms. 
He has been twice married. His first wife — 
to whom he was married while serving as clerk 
of the courts in Ohio — was Miss Catherine A. 
Jones, a daughter of Col. Lynds •buns, and i 
niece of Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, the well 
known statesman and pioneer Abolitionist of 
the "Western Reserve" of Ohio. Of this mar- 
riage there were two daughters: Julia Maria 
and Mary, the latter now the wife of J. C. 
Hunter, Esq., of Duluth. As has been stated, 
his first wife died in 1868, and in December, 
1872, lie married Miss Rose Watrous, of Bay 
City. Michigan. Of the latter marriage there 
is one daughter, Katherine W. Ensign. 



DANIEL G. CASH. 



As a member of the eld law firm of Ensign & 
• 'ash. and subsequently of its successor, En- 
sign, Cash & Williams, the subject of this 
sketch has long been a well-known citizen of 
Duluth, Minnesota. Daniel Gilbert Cash was 
bora at Cleveland, Ohio, February 11, 1st:;. 
His father was a native of Bradford county, 
Pennsylvania; the birthplace of his mother 
(nee Fanny Tooker) was Peru. Huron county, 
Ohio. They were married in 1840, and one child. 
Agnes F.j was born before Daniel. In 1S45 
the father took up a preemption claim on the 
Ontonagon river, the largesl southern tribu- 
tary of Lake Superior. In addition to a log 



cabin— the characteristic dwelling of preemp- 
tion claims— he erected a spacious frame 
house, and in October, 1S47, set out from 
Cleveland to conduct his family to their new 
home." There being then no canal at the Sault 
Ste. Marie, their trip had to be made in two 
different boats. The voyage to the Sault was 
a comparatively comfortable one. and crossing 
the portage, they re-embarked in Lake Supe- 
rior without serious misgivings; but it was 
three long weeks before they entered the On- 
tonagon. Blinding snowstorms swirled around 
(he little steamer like a winding sheet, while 
she was mercilessly harassed by furious gales. 
The waves dashed over her decks until her 
cabin was flooded; and after most of her cargo 
had been consumed as fuel, the machinery and 
pumps gave out, the tires were drowned and 
all hope was abandoned. But the wreck finally 
floated behind an island near the north shore 
of the lake, where she lay for a week, during 
which time Daniel's father, who was skilled 
as a machinist, made such repairs that she 
was able to venture forth again. After further 
vicissitudes, and much difficulty and danger 
in making the harbor and landing, they suc- 
ceeded in reaching their destination. Although 
Daniel was then lint four years old, the events 
of those fearful three weeks were indelibly 
impressed upon his mind, and to this day he 
can relate his experience, even to pathetic or 
humorous details. He suffered severely from 
sea-sickness during the voyage, but, as if that 
distressing malady had belonged to the cat'' 
gory of children's diseases, the one attack 
seemed to insure him againsl if for the future. 
In his numerous voyages on the lakes and 
ocean since, he has found himself an excellent 
sailor. The new home of the Cash family was 
delightfully located on the bank of the river 
and not far from the lake, and within a few- 
years the lather had cleared and laid out a fine 
farm, while the mother had converted the acres 
immediately surrounding the house into an 
orchard and flower gardens, until the place 
had taken on the aspect of a beautiful south- 
ern homestead. In this fair spot, and living a 
free, out-of-door life, the boy grew like file 
products of the fertile soil around him, became 



246 



BIOGRAPHY <)F MINNESOTA. 



expert in swimming and other athletic sports, 
helped his mother with her garden and his 
father in the fields. Both he and his older 
sister obtained the rudiments of their educa- 
tion at home, with their parents for teachers. 
When Daniel was eight years old they were 
sent to Cleveland, where they attended school, 
living with relatives of their mother. After 
two years their parents came to Cleveland, re- 
mained for three years, then the family 
returned to Ontonagon, which by this time 
supported a school. For the next few years 
Daniel attended the home school, helping with 
the farm work in summer. At eighteen 
he entered the preparatory school at Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, witli a view to taking 
the literary course of the University. At 
the close of his term of preliminary 
work he returned home, for the summer 
vacation, as lie thought; but the Rebellion 
was on and. catching the spirit of the war. 
he enlisted, August 4, 1862, in a company 
which was being raised in Ontonagon county 
and which was assigned to the Twenty-seventh 
Michigan Volunteers. This regiment later 
consolidated with another at Ypsilanti. and on 
(•ctober 10, Mr. Cash received the commission 
of second lieutenant, Company A. In the fol- 
lowing April the regiment was ordered to the 
front and joined the Ninth Army Corps in Ken- 
tucky. In June they were ordered to Vicks- 
burg. When that point had capitulated they 
moved on to Jackson. Mississippi, then came 
back to Kentucky and. passing through the 
Cumberland gap. entered Tennessee. Here 
Lieutenant Cash participated in the siege of 
Knoxville and the campaign of east Tennessee, 
and. in the spring of 1864, joined the Army of 
the Potomac under the command of General 
Grant. Meantime he had been promoted to 
first lieutenant, then to adjutant; and on May 
."i. 1864, he was advanced to the rank of cap- 
tain. In the following August Captain Cash 
was captured by the rebels and for six weeks 
confined in Libhy prison. He was then trans 
ferred to Salisbury, North Carolina. On Octo- 
ber III, while being taken from Salisbury to 
Danville, Virginia, he gained his freedom by 
breaking out of the car and jumping from the 



train. In company with a comrade, who had 
also escaped, he made for Mount Airy, Vir- 
ginia; but. although the two fugitives had 
disguised themselves by changing clothing 
with some negroes, they were recaptured and 
sent back as spies. Tin- next day, however, 
they managed to escape from the guard and 
succeeded in reaching a Union settlement. 
Here they slaid for a week, luxuriating in their 
sense of freedom and safety, then crossed the 
mountains to the Union lines at Gauly Bridge, 
Virginia. Captain Cash next went to Wash- 
ington, obtained leave of absence and, late in 
November, set out for home, where he had 
solemnly vowed to eat his Christmas dinner. 
He had a hard time getting there, for the boats 
had stopped for the winter, and from Green 
Bay, Wisconsin, he had to make the journey on 
a very primitive kind of mail conveyance, and 
through almost bottomless mud. But "fortune 
favors the brave." and he ate his Christmas 
dinner at home. Captain Cash returned to the 
army and was actively engaged in the opera 
lions which were consummated by the capture 
of Petersburg and the surrender of General 
Lee. On April 2, 1865, Captain Cash was 
made brevet major, and May 15, following, at- 
tained to the rank of major. He was mustered 
out and honorably discharged August 7. 1st;.",, 
and, together with comrades from Ontonagon, 
embarked for home on the steamship ".Me- 
teor." But new excitements and perils were 
in store for him, for while crossing Lake Huron 
a collision occurred between the "Meteor" and 
the steamer "Pewabic." the latter being scut- 
tled and sunk; and on the following day the 
"Meteor" herself took fire at the point of exit 
from the Sault Ste. Marie, and soon her charred 
bulk lay at the bottom of the canal basin. 
Fortunately the passengers escaped and the 
soldiers were reunited witli (heir waiting fami- 
lies. After a short home visit Major Cash en- 
tered the Law Department of the University 
of Michigan. After completing his course at 
Ann Arbor, he read law for two years in the 
office of Newberry & Pond, at Detroit. In 
1868, when Hon. Henry P. Baldwin was for 
the first time elected Coventor of Michigan. 
Ma jor < 'ash was appointed as his private seen' 



BIOGUAIMIY OF MINNESOTA. 



247 



tary, but before the date for entering upon his 
duties had arrived, he was summoned to the 
death-bed of his father in New York, who had 
gone East on business. The' daughter also 
came and joined her brother there, and togeth- 
er they cared for their father until his death 
early in the new year. Meantime Major Cash 
had relinquished his secretaryship to the Gov- 
ernor, and in the spring of 1870 he located in 
Dulu Hi. (if whose bar he has now for thirty 
years been an active and honored member. For 
two years he served as city attorney, and for 
six years as county attorney. In 1874 he formed 
a partnership with J. D. Ensign, and in 1886 
Ensign & Cash admitted a new member, John 
G. Williams, thus constituting the firm of En- 
sign, Cash & Williams, which was continued as 
Cash & Williams when Mr. Ensign became 
District Judge, in 1887. Besides his sister 
Agnes, now Mrs. Porter A. Hitchcock, of Fon- 
tiac, Michigan, Mr. Cash had another, younger. 
sister, and several brothers, as follows: Olive 
and John F., both of whom were deceased in 
childhood; Dr. William P. Cash, who died in 
California in 1890; James Cash, now of Du- 
Iuth, and Charles T. Cash, of Atlanta, Georgia. 
On October 1, 1872, Mr. Cash was married to 
Alice F>. Scott, daughter of Dr. John and Mar- 
garet Scott, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. A 
son, Scott Cash, born June 27, 1875, is their 
only child. 

HENRY M. BRADLEY. 

Henry Martin Bradley, for ten years past a 
cherished citizen of Duluth, Minnesota, was 
born May 7, 1824, at Lee, Berkshire county, 
Massachusetts. He represents a staunch old 
Puritan stock, resident in New England since 
1637, in which year one William Bradley came 
from England and settled in New Haven, Con- 
necticut. Henry M. is the son of William (a 
lineal descendant of the original settler) and 
Lucy (Ball) Bradley, both of whom, like him- 
self, were natives of Lee, Massachusetts. They 
were married in 1810. and became the parents 
of nine children, of whom Henry M. was the 
fourth in order of birth. In 1835, when the 
subject of this review 7 was eleven years of age. 



the father removed with his family to Ohio, 
locating in Wellington, Lorain county. Here, 
as opportunity permitted, the boy continued 
the education which he had begun in the pub- 
lic schools of the old Bay State. When about 
sixteen, however, he was led by business am- 
bition to abandon his text books for more prac- 
tical training, and, going to Seville, in Medina 
county, Ohio, he became an apprentice in the 
(•aiding and cloth dressing trade. But he did 
not follow the trade as a permanent occupa- 
tion. Previous to 1855, in which year he lo- 
cated in Bay City, Michigan, he spent several 
years in the towns of Litchfield and Sparta, 
Ohio, being for a considerable portion of this 
time engaged in the manufacture of hardwood 
lumber, which business he conducted in a saw- 
mill of his own. In Bay City, where he con- 
tinued to reside for a period of thirty-five 
years, Mr. Bradley experienced many phases of 
business success and ill-fortune. During the 
first three years he was employed as manager 
of Frost & Bradley's mill, which establishment 
was later known as N. B. Bradley & Sons. In 
1800 he bought the Catlin mill, in the operation 
of which prosperity attended him for more 
than ten years. But in the crisis of 1873, and 
the years of financial depression following, he 
suffered severe losses, and although his busi- 
ness had become extensive and apparently se- 
cure, he was compelled, in 1877, to succumb to 
the adverse forces. Tt would be hard to imag- 
ine, however, that his misfortune was due in 
any degree to negligence or bad management 
on his part, as he has repeatedly and in many 
capacities proven himself possessed of a high 
order of executive ability, and a perseverance 
which would overcome all ordinary obstacles. 
It is an ill wind, indeed, that blows nobody 
any good, and it occasionally happens that it 
blows the greatest good to the very ones we 
deem most hopelessly wrecked by its ravages. 
Moral forces and all the gentle virtues, so 
much more precious than gold, sometimes 
flourish most richly in the soil from whence 
material blessings have been rudely torn away. 
But this depends upon the nature of the soil. 
It is easy to bloom with the virtues of courage, 
energy and geniality in the fair sunshine of 



248 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



prosperity. It is quite another thing to with- 
stand ungeared disaster's withering sirocco. 
Yet there are steadfast and trustful souls who 
rise serene above the desolation of financial 
ruin and, looking abroad with a new under 
standing of life's problems and meaning, and 
an added sense of brotherhood for their strug- 
gling fellownien, set cheerfully to work again, 
conteni to do the best they can and leave the 
rest with Providence. Such was the spirit in 
which Mr. Bradley met liis reverses. He w;is 
obliged to surrender his mill, but nothing 
could deprive him of the practical knowledge 
gained during his many years of business expe- 
rience. He first became a dealer in logs, and 
after a time engaged in the location of timber 
and mining lands in Minnesota. In the latter 
line his work was crowned with a gratifying 
degree of success. It was his good fortune to 
become part owner in fee of that hoard of 
wealth in the Vermillion range well known as 
the Chandler Iron Mine; and from his min- 
ing interests alone he has realized a comfort- 
able competence. Mr. Bradley was identified 
with the development of Bay City from the 
mere village he found it to the thriving mu- 
nicipality he left in 1890 to take up his 
residence in Duluth. He was the first street 
commissioner of the youthful town, and served 
for several years as chief of the fire depart- 
ment. As a prominent member of the board 
of education, of which he was for two terms 
president, he did important service to the pub- 
lic schools. He was then, as now, a devoted 
Methodist, and it was largely at his instiga- 
tion and through his efforts that the Madison 
Avenue M. E. Church Society was organized 
and its fine edifice erected. He was not only a 
liberal contributor to the funds necessary to 
the enterprise, but he personally superintended 
the construction, and continued a faithful pro- 
moter of the interests of the church, filling at 
me time or another every office except that 
of pastor, and rendering especially efficient 
and valued service as superintendent of the 
Sunday school. In politics Mr. Bradley has 
never taken an active part, although always 1 
loyal Republican and one entertaining well 
defined opinions. On January 1. 1846, .Mr. 



Bradley was united in marriage to Mary Eliz- 
abeth Cook, a daughter of Alva Cook of Oil- 
ford, Medina county, Ohio. Eight children 
were born to Mr. and Mrs. Bradley, as follows: 
Alice A., Alva \\\, Elisha I... Charles II.. 
George M., Frank E., Edward L. and Addie 
May. Of these Elisha L., George M. and Frank 
E. are deceased. Of the five surviving all are 
married and have families, and all but one — 
Addie May, now .Mis. Carl Norpell, of Newark. 
Ohio — are residents of Duluth. The years of 
Mr. Bradley's residence in Duluth have been 
those years of advanced life, during which 
many men live in retirement from productive 
activities; but here, as in Bay City, he has 
entered with youthful zest into the general 
life, promoting, with both money and effort, 
numerous worthy enterprises. For a number 
of years he has been a member of the board 
of education; and as a trustee and class leader 
of the First Methodist church, he has been a 
faithful worker. He rendered efficient service 
as a member of the building committee which 
supervised the construction of its splendid 
edifice, which was completed in the year 1893; 
and he and two of his sons — Alva W. and Ed- 
ward L. — were among the largest contributors 
to the building fund. In the recent campaign 
for the payment of the indebtedness of $35^000 
on the property, he led the movement, contrib- 
uting about one-third of the required amount. 
But happy as he is in the general service, his 
own home fireside is to Mr. Bradley a hallowed 
spot. Blest in his children and his numerous 
grandchildren, blest in the consciousness of 
having earned the right to be called "the poor 
man's friend and the young man's guide," and. 
above all. blest in a firm faith in the wisdom 
and beneficence of the Infinite Father, his de- 
clining years may rightfully be deemed the 
richest and best of his life. 



MARION DOUGLASS. 

Marion Douglass. Esq.. of Duluth. Minne- 
sota, is a native of the State of Maine, born 
in Dixfield on the 29th of September, 1853. 
William E. Douglass, the father of Marion, 




The Century Publishing i Engraving Co Chicago- 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



249 



who was born in the year 1810, was also a 
native of Dixfield, Maine, and was reared 
in the rural community of that town, be- 
coming in maturity one of its most influential 
and respected citizens. He is still living, at 
the advanced age of four score years. The 
Douglass family is of Scotch descent, being 
traceable to the nobility of Scotland. The 
maiden name of the mother of Marion Doug- 
lass was Mahala Tucker, she being of English 
extraction. Her death took place in Maine, on 
September 11, 1879. The subject of this re- 
view is one of a family of seven children, six 
(if whom are still living. He is. however, the 
only one who has tried his fortunes in the 
West. He was reared upon his father's farm 
in Dixfield and attended the neighboring dis- 
trict schools until prepared for more advanced 
study. He then took a preparatory course at 
the Academy of Wilton, Maine, and in 1872 
entered Bates College, at Lewiston, Maine, 
lie was for four years a student in this institu- 
tion, graduating in the class of 187fi. Shortly 
after his graduation he took a trip to Europe, 
allured chiefly by foreign educational advan- 
tages. He went to Paris and spent a year in 
the International College of Languages. Fpon 
his return to this country, he accepted a posi- 
tion as instructor in the Normal School at Lee, 
Maine, where he taught for two years. Having 
decided to adopt the legal profession as his 
life work, he began reading law with Hutchin- 
son. Savage & Hale, attorneys of prominence 
in Lewiston. Maine. After about two years of 
study under this excellent tutorage. Mr. Doug- 
lass was admitted to practice at the Kennebec 
bar. This was in 1879, and during the same 
year he came West, making Minneapolis his 
objective point, where, in December, he opened 
an office for the practice of law. But his stay 
in Minneapolis was a short one, for. yielding 
to persuasion, he pushed further Wesl to make 
a tour of the Dakotas and select a location in 
that newer section. The point at length de- 
cided upon was a youthful settlement in Brown 
county. South Dakota, which, in 1881. arrived 
at the proportions and functions of a town, 
with the name of Columbia. Here Mi'. Doug 
lass took up his residence, though the first year 



or year and a half he spent largely in traveling 
in various plain regions of the West. During 
the four years of his residence in Columbia he 
built up a substantial law practice, and w T as 
made Probate Judge, being one of the first 
elected to this office in Brown county. He re- 
signed the office in a short time, as it interfered 
with his law practice. In September, lSSfi, he 
returned to Minnesota, locating permanently 
in Duluth, in which city he has since been 
continuously and successfully engaged in the 
practice of his chosen profession. In 1882, 
during his sojourn in South Dakota, Mr. Doug- 
lass returned to his native State of Maine, and 
on December 19 was united in marriage to 
Miss Mary E. Brooks, a daughter of Richard 
Brooks, of noble English ancestry. Mr. Doug- 
lass is a Mason of the Thirty-second degree, 
being a member of the Duluth Commandery. 
In politics he affiliates with the Republican 
party, and manifests a lively interest in polit- 
ical matters. 



WALLACE B. DOUGLAS. 

Wallace Barton Douglas, Attorney-General 
of the State of Minnesota, was born in Leyden, 
Lewis county, New York, September 21, 1852. 
He is the son of Asahel M. and Alma E. (Mil- 
ler) Douglas. He traces his ancestry to Deacon 
William Douglas, who emigrated from Scot- 
land in 1640, and set! led in New England, and 
whose wife was Ann Mattel. From this union 
sprung the main branch of the Douglas family 
in America. The Hon. Stephen A. Douglas of 
Illinois was a conspicuous member of this fam- 
ily. The early life of Wallace B. was spent 
on his father's farm, where he attended the 
common schools and afterwards received a few 
months' instruction at the Cazenovia Seminary. 
When he was fifteen years of age his father 
removed to Momence, Illinois, and a few years 
later Wallace entered the University of Mich- 
igan, where he graduated from the Law De- 
partment in 1875. From 1875 until 1883 he 
practiced law in Chicago. In 1883, his health 
requiring a change of climate, he came to Min- 
nesota and settled in Moorhead, where he has 
since resided, and where he has become emi- 



250 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



nent in the practice of his profession. A Re- 
publican in politics, he has always taken an 
active interest in the affairs of his party. For 
five years he served as city attorney of Moor- 
head; was county attorney of Clay county 
for six years, and is recognized as one of the 
ablest attorneys of northwestern Minnesota. 
In the fall of 1S!»4 he was elected to represent 
the Fiftieth Senatorial District in the Legis 
latnre of 1895, and was re-elected in 1896 in a 
strongly Populistic district. During the ses 
sion he gave efficient aid in securing the pas- 
sage of the Red river drainage appropriation, 
and had full charge of this measure after its 
constitutionality was attacked. He succeeded 
in convincing the Senate Judiciary Committee 
that this legislation was strictly Constitu- 
tional, and the law has since been upheld and 
respected. He was the author and promoter 
of the legislation changing the right of appeals 
from the decision of the Board of Railway and 
Warehouse Commission to the comity wherein 
the complainant reside. In 1898 he was 
elected Attorney-General of the State, which 
office he now holds. At the present time he 
is one of perhaps half a dozen men from 
various sections of the State who are acknowl- 
edged leaders of the younger and more pro- 
gressive element in the Republican party. As 
a political speaker he takes high rank, and 
during recent campaigns he lias been in con 
stant demand throughout the northern section 
of the State. He is a good debater and a hard 
fighter — one whose aid is courted and whose 
resistance is feared. A prominent business 
man of St. Paul, who has known Mr. Douglas 
intimately for many years, says of him: 

"Mr. Douglas is an enthusiastic student of 
all new opinions and decisions — especially in 
corporation and constitutional law — in which 
he aims to keep abreast of the times. When 
serving as prosecuting attorney for Clay conn 
ty lie made a remarkable record in the convic- 
tion of criminals indicted by the grand jury. 
During his term of six years there were ninety- 
two indictments and but six acquittals. 

Mr. Douglas is an enthusiastic sportsman 
and a remarkable shot. As an incident of his 
love of the forest and the stream, he has ever 



been an ardent game protector, and during the 
Legislatures of 1895 and 1SU7 he took a promi 
miit part in framing the existing game laws 
of Minnesota, several features of which are 
considered by some to be quite radical and se- 
vere, but which have been sustained by the 
-Supreme Court of Minnesota. He had a ver\ 
lucrative practice as an attorney, and it was 
a great financial sacrifice for him to abandon 
this for the office of Attorney-General. How- 
ever, when (lie matter of increasing the sala- 
ries in his department came before the 
Legislature, though he recommended that the 
compensation of his assistants be increased, 
he insisted upon his own salary remaining the 
same. His views on this question, which are 
so rare in modern politics as to be quite re- 
freshing, were as follows: He stated that he 
had accepted the nomination of his party for 
the position, with a full knowledge of the com- 
pensation fixed by law. and by so doing lie 
considered thai lie was under obligations to 
serve out his term without any increase in 
salary." 

In 18!)" he was the author of the good roads 
amendment to the Constitution of Minnesota. 
which was adopted in the general election of 
1898. The feature with which he was most 
closely connected, in 1897, was a bill which 
failed. It had for its object the lessening of 
freight rates upon grain and coal. This was 
the attempt to provide a statutory rate in the 
nature of a distance tariff on these products. 
In a social way Mr. Douglas is very compan- 
ionable, unselfish and always loyal to his 
friends. He is an active member of the Ma- 
sonic Odd Fellows and Knights of Pythias 
societies. Mr. Douglas was married May 19. 
1881, to Ella M. Smith, daughter of Charles C. 
Smith, Ohannahon, Illinois. This union has 
been blest with two children. Harold 1!. and 
Leila L. 



MOSES E. CLAPP. 



A big brained, big-hearted man. of an ear 
nest nature, forcible in action and eloquent 
of speech, a man of enlarged views and libera! 
ideas, a frank and hearty Westerner with a 




Th& tentury • Pu&U5fMtej & Cnt/txtvmjj Co Chicapo" 



O^ £Lt 



r.TOGRArnv of Minnesota. 



251 



legion of admiring friends — is Moses E. Clapp, 
the well-known Minnesota lawyer, ex-Attorney 
General, and now a prominent attorney of St. 
Paul. "General" Clapp, as lie is commonly 
known, was horn at Delphi, Carroll county, 
Indiana, May 21, 1851. His father, Harvey S. 
Clapp came of a New England family. He 
settled in Indiana in 1849, hut passed the 
greater part of his life in Wisconsin, and died 
in that State in 1889. General Clapp's mother 
was .lane Van Dercook, a native of Ohio, but 
of New York parents and Knickerbocker an- 
cestry. He has been most distinguished in 
life as a lawyer. His legal studies were pur- 
sued in the University of Wisconsin, and he 
began the practice in 187:! at Hudson, Wiscon- 
sin. In 1882 he moved to Fergus Falls, Minne- 
sota, where he soon became prominent, not 
only in his profession, but as an advocate of 
the principles of the Republican party, and 
one of its leaders in northern Minnesota. In 
1886 he was the Republican candidate for At- 
torney General, and took a very active part in 
the campaign. He was renominated and re- 
elected in 1888 and again in 1890, and was 
Attorney General of the State six years in all. 
Upon retiring from the Attorney General's 
office in 1893, he resumed the private practice 
of the law, talcing up his permanent residence 
in St. Paul, and forming with Newell H. Clapp 
and A. E. Macartney, the well-known legal 
firm of Clapp <Jfc Macartney. The Arm soon se- 
cured and still has a large general practice, 
and is most successful in the conduct of its 
business. As a lawyer. General Clapp has at- 
tained to more than local distinction. He has 
been called to a large number of important 
cases, nol only in Minnesota, but in the l>a- 
kotas, and has been more than ordinarily suc- 
cessful in winning victories. He is perhaps 
most effective as an advocate, although he is 
known to be thoroughly versed in all the fea- 
tures of American jurisprudence. His official 
opinions, while Attorney General, read like ju- 
dicial decisions, and have the same respect 
and practically the same authority among law- 
yers generally. Bui as an advocate, he is, so 
to speak, in his native element. No matter 
what may be the subject of his plea, he is never 



uninteresting or dull, is commonly forcible, 
and often finely eloquent. On the stump he is 
as effective as at the bar, and his services are 
demanded in campaigns oftener than they can 
be granted. He is personally very popular 
among his friends, and for some years his ad- 
mirers insisted on his becoming the Repub- 
lican candidate for Governor. At last, in 1890, 
he consented to stand for the nomination, as 
the leader of the opposition to the then ex- 
isting State administration. Certain combina- 
tions defeated him, but he did not "sulk in his 
lent," and again took the stump and canvassed 
the State in the interest of the ticket, with his 
usual loyalty, earnestness and good effect. 
General Clapp was married in 1874 to Miss 
Eattie Allen, of St. Croix county, Wisconsin, 
and there are three children living of their 
marriage, named Katherine, Harvey and Ella. 



ALVAREN ALLEN. 



Col. Alvaren Allen, of St. Paul, who was born 
September 25, 1822, at Morristown, St. Law- 
rence county. New York, was the eldest son of 
Aaron and Elizabeth Allen. The Allen family 
had its origin in the North of Ireland, whence 
John Allen, the father of Aaron, came to 
America and settled in Connecticut. He served 
as an officer in the Revolutionary War. Aaron 
Allen was born at Hartford. Connecticut, and 
was reared on a farm. He served in the War 
of 1812, and while in the service inarched from 
Sacketts Harbor, New York, to Detroit, Mich- 
igan. After the war he settled in St. Law- 
rence county. New York, and married Miss 
Elizabeth Gould, of Brownsville, Jefferson 
county, New York. Here he engaged in stock 
raising, took an interest in local affairs and 
served as captain of a company in New York 
Stati- Militia. In 1836 he removed with his 
family to Wisconsin, and took up a claim 
situated on the Rock river, twelve miles from 
Janesville, where he again engaged in raising 
slock. A short time after he was gored to 
death by a vicious bull, thus placing much of 
the responsibility of the management of the 
farm upon his son, Alvaren. The early life 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



of young Allen differed in no wise from that 
of other country boys of pioneer days in the 
West. School facilities were extremely lim- 
ited in those days, but such advantages as the 
country could afford were at the disposal of 
young Allen. He made the best of his oppor- 
tunities, attending the little log school at Ft. 
Atkinson, Wisconsin, during the winter and 
driving a team during the summer months. 
In 1843 he entered the first high school in the 
Territory, which was located at Beloit. After 
graduating from this school he was employed 
as teacher in the same institution, and later 
accepted a position in a large general store. 
Here he continued until 1847, when he went 
to Milwaukee and engaged as salesman for 
Shepherd, Bonnell & Williams, wholesale dry 
goods and groceries. At the expiration of six 
months he was promoted to the position of 
head salesman, which he held until 1851. Jan- 
uary 15, 1851, Mr. Allen was married to .Miss 
Louisa J. Soule, of Schenectady. New York, a 
young lady of French descent, who was left an 
orphan at two years of age. She was reared 
in the family of an uncle, Nicholas Ehle. In 
the spring of this same year Mr. Allen bought 
a team, and, with his wife, drove across the 
country to the Mississippi liver, having in view 
a threefold object: first, to visit the trade in 
the interest of Shepherd, Bonnell & Williams; 
second, in search of pleasure and recreation; 
and, third, to prospect for a location that 
would offer inducements to one of his ability 
and ambition. On reaching Dubuque, he found 
the steamboat "Excelsior" at the landing, 
crowded with people bound for the Territory 
of Minnesota. A quick counsel with his wife 
determined him to put the team on board and 
accompany the throng of emigrants and pros- 
pectors. They arrived at St. Paul on a Friday 
morning in the month of May, 1851. Here he 
was received by an old friend, Robert Canida, 
who was the proprietor of the weather-boarded 
log cabin known as the Central House. This 
building was later used as the first capitol of 
Minnesota. The following Sunday he, with his 
wife, drove to St. Anthony and halted on a 
hill overlooking the falls, where the State 
Universitv now stands. Mrs. Allen remarked 



that this was the most beautiful spot she had 
ever seen, and that it looked like home; to 
which Colonel Allen replied, "then we will call 
it home, as we have nothing special to lake 
us back to Wisconsin." After spending two 
days at St. Anthony his wife asked him if he 
could see any way to make a living, lie re- 
plied that he would make a venture in the 
livery business, as his team had been driven 
to St. Paul the preceding day, for which he 
received a five dollar gold piece, in payment 
for transportation, and again the second day 
bringing in ten dollars. Mr. Allen was quick 
to see the opportunity and immediately em- 
barked in the livery business. In 1S5:! he 
opened a stage line from St. Paul to Monti- 
cello and St. Cloud. Colonel Allen was the 
second mayor of St. Anthony, and resigned 
his office in the fall of 1S56, when he removed 
to St. Paul. There he purchased the stage 
line and mail route of Patterson, Benson & 
Ward, but later sold a half interest to C. L. 
Chase, Secretary of the Territory, for $21,00(1. 
In 1858 Mr. Chase sold his interest to Col. J. L. 
Merriam. In 1859, in conjunction with the 
Northwestern Express Company, they started 
the line from St. Paul to La Crosse, Wiscon- 
sin, and soon after consolidated their business 
with that of J. C. Burbank & Company, who 
owned and controlled all the Northwestern 
stage lines, the company being known as the 
Minnesota Stage Company. Colonel Allen fol- 
lowed the stage business uutil 1868, when he 
began railroading, and built forty miles of the 
S. M. R. R. He continued railroad building 
until 1S72. June 1, 1873, he purchased Col. 
John Shaw's interest and lease in the Mer- 
chants Hotel of St. Paul for $40,000, and in 1882 
he bought the hotel from Colonel Potter for 
$275,000. He has made many improvements 
since until the present value of the property 
is not far from half a million dollars, lie has 
bought and sold a great deal of real estate in 
the "Twin Cities," and always with a profit to 
himself. Colonel Allen, though leaning to- 
wards the Democratic party, is very conserva- 
tive in politics. He believes in voting for the 
best man, regardless of party, and supported 
William McKinley for the Presidency in 1896. 



BTOGRArnY OF MINNESOTA. 



253 



He was instrumental in building the market 
house in St. Paul; was chairman of the 
finance committee, and gave six months of 
diligent and faithful service. He served the 
city as alderman for eight .years, and was presi- 
dent of the council for four years. While on 
a visit to St. Louis in 1S75, during the Carnival 
of the Veiled Prophet, lie conceived the idea 
of illuminating the city of St. Paul in like 
manner for the coming fall fair, and succeeded 
in making this a success. These illuminations 
and decorations have been continued from year 
to year ever since. He also figured very promi- 
nently in bringing the Ice Palace into exist- 
ence, which proved so attractive and profitable 
to the city. Colonel Allen is a Knight Tem- 
plar, and the only surviving member of Cata- 
ract Lodge No. 2, St. Anthony Falls, organized 
in 1851 or 1852. There were born to Mr. and 
Mrs. Allen two sons, George Hamilton and 
Ehler, both deceased. 



EDWARD C. MITCHELL. 

Rev. Edward Craig Mitchell, A. M., of St. 
Paul, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, July 21, 
1836. lie was the second of three children, the 
sons of Edward Phillips Mitchell, of Salem, Ro- 
anoke county, Virginia, and Elizabeth Tyndale 
Mitchell, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. All 
four of Mr. Mitchell's grandparents were of En- 
glish descent. His father's family lived in Vir- 
ginia through six generations. His mother was 
descended from a brother of William Tyndale, 
the author of the first English translation of 
the New Testament, and who suffered martyr- 
dom for that work. John Tyndall. the scien- 
tist, belonged to 1 lie same family. In 1841 
Edward P. Mitchell, the father of Edward C, 
removed with his family to Philadelphia, Penn- 
sylvania, where he was engaged in mercantile 
pursuits and was also president of the Com- 
monwealth Bank. His eldest son, James Tyn- 
dale Mitchell, of Philadelphia, is one of the 
Justices of the Supreme Court of Penn- 
sylvania, and was for many years editor 
of the American Law Register. Edward C. 
Mitchell was educated in Philadelphia, in the 



Central High School and the University of 
Pennsylvania. In 1859 lie was admitted to the 
liar of Philadelphia. In 18G1 Mr. Mitchell en- 
tered the ministry of Hie New Jerusalem (or 
Swedenborgiau) church, in Philadelphia. From 
1860 to 1863 he preached in Philadelphia; from 
L863 to 1866, in Providence and Pawtucket, 
Rhode Island; from 1866 to 1809, in North 
Bridgewater (now Brocton), Massachusetts; 
from 1869 to 1872, in Detroit, Michigan. In 
April, 1872, Mr. Mitchell removed to Minneap- 
olis, Minnesota, and in 1876 he came to St. 
Paul, where he has since resided. From 1872 
to 1880 he officiated in both cities, Minneapolis 
and St. Paul; but since 1880 he has served the 
St. Paul church only. His first preaching in 
St. Paul was in the lecture room of the Y. M. 
C. A., on Third street, near Minnesota street, 
from 1S72 to 1876, when the society purchased 
and refitted the old First Methodist church on 
Market street, between Fourth and Fifth 
streets. In 18S7 they built the new and 
picturesque church at the corner of Virginia 
and Selby avenues, on St. Anthony Hill. As a 
preacher, Mr. Mitchell's style is logical, rather 
than rhetorical. His aim is to help his hear- 
ers to open their minds to spiritual truths; his 
earnest effort being directed to unfolding the 
profounder meaning of the Scriptures, and to 
applying such meaning to the practical walk of 
daily life, in the belief that all religion relates 
to life, and that a religious life is in living 
from well-defined religious principles in every 
relation of practical daily life. It has been 
said of him that his discourses are clear and 
forcible — "written from the head and spoken 
from the heart"; but the strongest argument 
that he makes in favor of his religion is his 
own daily life. Of strong mental gifts and 
attributes, Mr. Mitchell is a very accomplished 
gentleman in all true essentials. He is a 
scholar, a thinker, a litterateur, a theologian. 
As an author, Mr. Mitchell, in addition to many 
sermons, lectures, etc., has published an octavo 
work on "The Parables of the New Testament, 
Spiritually Unfolded," being an interpretation 
of 1 lie symbolic meaning of the forty parables 
of the New Testament. Without the semblance 
of dilettanteism, he is refined and polished. 



254 



P.IOCRAPHY OF MINNESOTA, 



Personally be is universally esteemed, and no 
man in the city has stronger friends and ad- 
mirers. In 1865 Mr. Mitchell was married to 
Miss Lousia C. Fernald, of Portland, Maine, 
for whose health he moved to Minnesota; hut 
she did not long survive. In July, 1870. he was 
married to Miss Annie Iungerich, daughter of 
Louis C. Iungerich, Esq., of Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania, a well-known merchant and 
hanker. Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell have one son, 
Walton, born December 26, 1877, now a med- 
ical student at the University of Minnesota. 
Resides his church work, Mr. Mitchell has al- 
ways been active in charitable and benevolent 
organizations. For many years he was in the 
board of managers, and in the executive com- 
mitter of the St. Paul Society for the Relief of 
the Poor; and for several years was one of 
the vice-presidents of the society and chair 
man of the executive committee. He was the 
originator of the Free Kindergartens of Si. 
Paul, and is still president of the society. He 
also organized the St. Paul Day Nursery or 
Creche, in which lie takes an active interest. 
He was for a number of years vice-president 
of the Humane Society for the prevention of 
cruelty to children and animals. Mr. Mitch- 
ell is a charter member of the "Sons of the 
American Revolution," and was the chaplain 
of the society until December, 1898. He is a 
member of the "Society of the Colonial Wars 
in the State of Minnesota," and was the chap- 
lain of the society for the year 1899. He is 
also a member of the "Society of American 
Wars"; a member of the "American Institute 
of Civics," and is president of the "St. Paul 
Academy of Science." 



THOMAS SHAW. 



Thomas Shaw, professor of animal hus- 
bandry in the University of Minnesota, was 
born of Scotch parentage, at Niagara-on-the- 
lake, Ontario, Canada. January 3, 1813. His 
parents were Robert and Margaret (Carnachan) 
Shaw, both natives of Parr Hill parish, ( 'olmo- 
nell, Scotland. His father came to Ontario in 
1833, where he married, and raised a family 



of nine children, of whom Thomas was the 
fourth child and second son. He was reared 
on his father's farm, and educated in the com- 
mon schools. At the age of sixteen he com- 
menced teaching school, and with the money 
he obtained purchased a farm near Hamilton. 
Ontario, and spent twenty-five years in active 
farm work on his own account, and achieved 
distinction among the most successful farm- 
ers for the intelligent and profitable manage- 
ment of his farm. In 1882, with his brother, 
the late Dr. George M. Shaw, he established 
the 'Canadian Live Stock and Farm Journal," 
which he edited for seven years. He was fore- 
most in the farmers' institute work in Ontario, 
and in other efforts to promote the farmer's 
welfare. He was called to the chair of agri- 
culture in the College of Agriculture at 
Guelph, Ontario, in 1888. He wrote eight times, 
in competitive contests on agricultural sub- 
jects, six provincial and two international, 
open only to agricultural colleges, and was 
awarded eight first premiums. In 1893 he was 
offered and accepted the chair of animal hus- 
bandry at the University of Minnesota Experi- 
ment Station. Professor Shaw has long since 
become recognized as an expert authority on 
many phases of farm practice and agricultural 
science. He was the author, in 1892, of the 
book, "Weeds and Methods of Eradicating 
Them," also the article on sheep in Johnson's 
Encyclopaedia, 1893. "Forage Crops, other 
than Grasses," is the title of a new book by 
Professor Shaw, now in publication by the 
Orange Judd Publishing Company. Like all 
his works, it is practical, scientifically accu- 
rate, and very thorough. Professor's Shaw's 
latest work, "The Study of Rreeds," now in 
the hands of the same publishers, will doubt- 
less at once become the accepted authority on 
all the pedigreed breeds in America, of cattle, 
sheep and swine. These books are designed 
as text books for agricultural colleges in all 
parts of the United States and Canada, and 
also for popular use. The book on live stock 
he considers as the greatest work of his life, 
and in its preparation he has spent a large 
part of his time for twelve years. This work 
is entirely a new creation, there never having 




The Century Pitflishim) j; tnymviny Co Chicago- 



(?7U<SL<:>c^t^7 <ttc^t^ct— 



P.IOGUAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



-.->? 



been before an attempt made to systemize the 
study of biccds, to describe their characteris- 
tics, and the points by which they can be 
judged. Professor Shaw lias another work just 
ready for the press, entitled "Soiling Crops, 
and the Silo." designed to supply the need of 
systematic text-books for the use of colleges 
in that line. This book is intended to meet 
the needs of dairymen, and will be the first 
lext book that has ever been written on the 
subject. The first part of the book is devoted 
to crops to cut and feed green, more partic- 
ularly in the late summer, when grass is 
scarce; the latter part of the work treats of 
the history of the silo; crops suitable for the 
silo; building the silo; curing crops in the 
silo, and feeding the silage. Professor Shaw 
spent three winters in the farmers' institute 
work in Minnesota, in addition to lectures 
given at the school of agriculture, and has con- 
ducted a large amount of experimental work- 
in growing and fattening cattle, sheep and 
swine, and has prepared bulletins, which have 
been issued by the university from time to 
time, in regard to this work. The work which 
Professor Shaw considers of most importance, 
since he came to Minnesota, is the growing of 
pastures for sheep and cattle, other than 
grasses, making it possible to double or triple 
the ordinary capacity of a farm for the keep- 
ing of stock, and which can be embodied in 
the practice of ordinary farming, in a greater 
or less degree, in every State in the Union. In 
1890 Professor Shaw, while in Canada, issued 
a bulletin on the rape-plant — a plant that was 
practically unknown in tin' United Slates at 
that time — and its uses and value were 
brought to the attention of the American peo- 
ple by the Department of Agriculture at 
Washington, in the publication, in 1892, of this 
bulletin, re-written by Professor Shaw. At the 
present time it is safe to say that 5,000,000 
sheep in the United States are fattened on 
rape alone. At the present time Professor 
Shaw is paying special attention to the grow- 
ing of forage' plants in various parts of the 
United States, thorough experiments being 
conducted by private individuals under his di- 
rection, and from which source he is receiving 



much valuable information. Professor Shaw 
was married July 4, 1865, to Mary Janet Sidey, 
a native of Woodburn, Ontario. They have 
four children: Mary Isabella (Mrs. Dr. M. H. 
Reynolds of St. Anthony Park), Robert S. Shaw 
(Professor of Agriculture in the College at 
Bozeman, Montana), William T. Shaw (a grad- 
uate of the University of Minnesota), and 
Florence \Y., living at home. Professor Shaw 
is a Republican in politics, a member of the 
Presbyterian church, and an active worker in 
church and Sundav school. 



LAFAYETTE G. M. FLETCHER. 

1 

Lafayette G. M. Fletcher, of Mankato, was 
born in Stockholm, St. Lawrence county. New 
York, February 13, 1830. His parents were 
Adolphus and Sarah (Wellington) Fletcher. 
Loth his parents were of English descent 
through colonial families noted in the early 
history of New England. His father was a 
native of Walpole, New Hampshire, born in 
17115, and served as a private soldier in the 
War of 1812. His grandfather, Luke Fletcher, 
served through the War of the Revolution, 
fought at Newton and, wintering at Valley 
Forge, was present at the surrender of York- 
town. The Fletcher family came from 
England in 1630 and settled in Lowell, Massa- 
chusetts. The subject of this biography spent 
his younger days on his father's farm, at- 
tended the common scl 1 and later the St. 

Lawrence Academy, at Potsdam, and the 
Ogdensburg Academy, and taught school win- 
ters from the age of nineteen to twenty four. 
His father died at the old homestead in 1851, 
and his mother in 1873. In May, 1854, young 
Fletcher started out to see the world, and to 
make a place for himself, intending to go to 
Council Bluffs, Iowa. He stopped at Dubuque, 
Iowa, for a few weeks, and while there met a 
party of government surveyors, and engaged 
to go with them. He was active, energetic, 
and quick to learn, and be soon picked up a 
fair understanding of the work. He was given 
charge of a party in townshiping and check- 
ing, a portion of the season of 1854. They 



*56 



BIOORAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



started the survey July 6, 1854, at the smith- 
cast corner of Blue Earth county and run 
west on the first standard parallel, reaching 
Mankato about August 15, of the same year. 
Mr. Fletcher was so much pleased with the 
country that he concluded to locate there per- 
manently, and he was the only one out of a 
party of forty men that remained. He imme- 
diately made a claim north of the present town 
site, where he built a homestead, and where 
he has resided for ever forty-five years. While 
the country was new he spent much of his time 
in locating new comers, surveying (hums and 
making out papers. He located the Maple 
River colony and surveyed the land; he also 
surveyed and laid out several additions to the 
city of .Mankato. He has been engaged in 
farming, grain storing, and in the real estate 
business, and has built some of the substan- 
tial business blocks of Mankato. He was one 
of the original incorporators of the Mankato 
Savings Bank, and has been its president since 
its organization, with Mr. J. C. Cotton cashier. 
He was also one of the directors of the Man 
kato Manufacturing Company, and has been 
interested in many other business institutions. 
He was one of the original five who organized 
the Republican Party in Mankato, in 185(5, and 
he is the only surviving member of that quin- 
tette. He has been a member of the school 
board nearly all the time since I860, and has 
served the people faithfully in that capacity. 
He helped to build the first school house in 
Mankato in the summer of 1855, and he taught 
the first school in the winter of 1855 and 1856, 
and also in the winter of 1857 and 1858. He 
was elected to the State Senate in 1883 and 
served for one term. In fact he has always 
been a prominent figure in the history of Man- 
kato. A prominent citizen who has known 
him intimately for many years says: 

"Mr. Fletcher has truly been the architect 
of his own fortune. The capital with which 
he started was an abiding ambition to suc- 
ceed, strong hands and a steadfast purpose; 
lii' was gifted with good practical ability, and 
schooled in industry and in the practice of 
rigid economy in the husbanding of his re- 
sources. Success attended his efforts, as a 
reward for well directed industry, and with it 



he secured the confidence and respect of his 
fellow citizens. Mr. Fletcher is a gentleman of 
coirect habits, positive convictions, and strong 
in friendships. He is a firm and unswerving 
friend of the cause of popular education, and 
from his earliest citizenship in Mankato, has 
earnestly and unselfishly labored to promote 
its success. For over forty years lie has been 
identified with the school interests of Man- 
kato. and while he has, in the positive declara- 
tion of his views, incurred opposition, the 
earnestness and unmistakable honesty of his 
purpose has commanded the confidence and 
support of his constituency, enabling him to 
wiidd a large influence in shaping and direct 
ing the policy of the public schools. He has 
always been on the side of good government, 
and for simplicity and econoniv in all public 
affairs." 

Mr. Fletcher was married in December, 
1858, to Lucina B. Foot, who died September 
17, 1870. He married his present wife, whose 
maiden name was Susie M. Dyer, May 15, 1872. 
His children are: George H. Fletcher — a 
prominent attorney of Minneapolis; Carrie D. 
— Mrs. C. J. Rockwood of Minneapolis; Emma 
A.— Mrs. W. YV. Davis, Jr., of Mankato; 
Lucine E. (deceased); Ella May — teaching in 
Minneapolis; Jennie D. — teaching in Man- 
kato; Nellie (deceased); Mildred, L. G. M., Jr., 
and Edith — living at home, in Mankato. 



MARTIN J. SEVERANCE. 

Hon. Martin J. Severance, a pioneer lawyer 
of the Territory of Minnesota, a gallant officer 
of the Union army during the war of the 
Rebellion, and for the past nineteen years the 
learned and just Judge of the District Court 
of the Sixth Judicial District of Minnesota, 
was born at Shelburn Falls, Franklin county, 
Massachusetts, on Christmas Eve, L826. He 
was a son of Asa and Calista (Boyden) Sever- 
ance, both of whom, like himself, were born 
in the old Bay State, and he is descended 
from very old New England stock. His first 
American ancestor on the paternal side came 
from England to the colony of Massachusetts 
in 1636. His great grandfather, Martin Sever- 
ance, served through the French and Indian 




Th&teiituryPuMisluitg &Eymviry Co Clucaya 



IWOGRAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



257 



war — 1756 to 17(33 — and also through the war 
of the Revolution, receiving his discharge from 
the Patriot army of the war for indepen- 
dence at the advanced age of seventy-three 
years. He was with Colonel Rodgers' 
"Rangers" when they attacked and destroyed 
the town of St. Francis, on the St. Lawrence 
river, in Canada. Sunn after, lie was taken 
prisoner by the French and Indians, carried 
to Canada, held a captive for two years, and 
finally returned by way of France, England, 
and Quebec. His parents, Asa and Calista 
Severance, had a family of ten children, five 
sons and live daughters, all of whom lived to 
maturity, and seven of whom are yet living. 
One daughter died at the age of eighteen, and 
two sons were killed in battle during the war 
of the Rebellion, one at Fair Oaks, Virginia, 
in lstiL', and the other at Port Hudson, Louis- 
iana, in 1863. Another son was severely 
wounded at the capture of Arkansas Post, but 
recovered and is now living in the State of 
Michigan. The war record of the Severance 
family is particularly good and notable. Asa 
Severance was a thrifty farmer, and his son 
Martin passed his early life in the manner of 
many another farmer's boy — helping with the 
"chores" and farm work, and attending the 
common schools — until he was eighteen years 
of age. His education was completed in the 
Franklin Academy, at Shelburn Falls, and in 
the Williston Seminary — now Williston Col- 
lege — at East Hampton, Massachusetts; he 
was about six years at school in these insti- 
tutions. In 1849 he went to Chicopee, Massa- 
chusetts, and for two years was a law student 
in the office of Hon. John Wells, who subse- 
quently became a Judge of the Supreme Court 
of Massachusetts, and died in office. His legal 
studies were completed with the law firm of 
Beach & Bond, of Springfield, Massachusetts, 
and, in 1854, he was admitted to the bar. For 
two years he was engaged in the practice of 
his profession at < 'hicopee, Massachusetts. In 
1856 Mr. Severance came to Minnesota, arriv- 
ing at St. Paul May 21. Locating at Hender- 
son, Sibley county, then a little frontier town, 
he opened a law office and engaged in practice. 
He soon became prominent in the community 



and in public affairs. He was county attorney 
of Sibley county for two terms, and in L858 
was elected to serve in the Legislature which 
was expected to meet in the following Janu- 
ary, but which, owing to certain legal and 
preventing obstacles, did not convene. In tsiii 
lie was again elected and served one term. 
August 14, 1862, during the great Southern 
Rebellion, he enlisted as a private in Company 
1, Tenth Minnesota Infantry. Four days later 
came the great Sioux Indian outbreak. He 
was with his company when, as a part of the 
force under General Sibley, it went to the relief 
of Fort Ridgely and to the defense of the 
upper Minnesota valley. Later in the year he 
attended the extra session of the Legislature 
as a member, although he was still a private 
soldier. In November, 1863, he went South 
with his regiment, and for a time was sta- 
tioned at St. Louis. April 4, 1864, he was 
promoted to the captaincy of his company, and 
served with this rank until he was mustered 
out with his regiment, in August, 1865, after 
the close of the war. His company was a 
splendid organization, and although its mate- 
rial was somewhat remarkable, yet it was 
typical and representative of the frontier of 
Minnesota at the time. It was composed of 
white frontiersmen and mixed-blood Indians 
in about equal proportion. It made an excel 
lent record for hard and faithful service ami 
for good conduct generally. In May, 1864, 
Captain Severance went with his command to 
Columbus, Kentucky, and thence to Memphis, 
Tennessee. As a part of Gen. A. J. Smith's 
Sixteenth Army Corps, the regiment partici- 
pated in the battles about Tupelo, Mississippi, 
July 13-15, 1864. Later in the same year it 
was on the "Oxford raid" when the town of 
Oxford, Mississippi, was burned in retaliation 
for the destruction of the town of Chambers- 
burg, Pennsylvania, by the Confederates. In 
August it went to Devall's Bluff, Arkansas, 
and from this post in September it started on 
the long and toilsome expedition of Gen. A. 
• 1. Smith after the Confederate raiding force 
under General Price that had invaded Mis- 
souri. The Tenth Regiment marched on this 
expedition from Devall's Bluff, through Ar- 



2 5 8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



kansas and Missouri almost to the Kansas 
liiie, near Kansas City, or until the Confeder- 
ates had been overtaken by General l'leasan- 
ton's and General Curtis' cavalry commands 
and defeated at the Little Blue, the Big Blue 
and Westport, all near the western line of 
Missouri, in the neighborhood of Kansas City. 
Then, with the main part of Smith's Corps, it 
was sent to Tennessee, arriving at Nashville 
November 30. It took part in the battles ai 
Nashville, December 15 and 10, 1804, and on 
the latter day participated in the magnificent 
and victorious assault on General Hood's 
Confederate lines. After the victory it took 
pari in the pursuit of Hood's broken army to 
the Tennessee river, going into camp for a 
month at Eastport, Alabama. In the early 
spring of 1805 it was sent to the Gulf of 
Mexico and participated in the capture of 
.Mobile, April 0, 1805 — the last important bat- 
tle of the war. Captain Severance was mus- 
tered out with the regiment at Fort Snelling, 
August 19, 1805. During his entire term of 
long and active military service, Captain Sev- 
erance spent but twenty days in the hospital. 
He was slightly wounded at the battle of 
Nashville, but he has never applied for a pen- 
sion. After his discharge from the army, 
Captain Severance located at Le Sueur, Minne- 
sota, and resumed the practice of law. In 
1870 he removed to Mankato and continued in 
his profession. He became very prominent as 
a lawyer, especially in the conduct of criminal 
cases, and attained to an eminent standing at 
the bar of his county, his district, and his 
State. For one year he was associated with 
O. O. Pitcher, Esq., in partnership, and subse- 
quently with Hon. I). A. Dickinson, who later 
became one of the Judges of the State 
Supreme Court. He removed to St. Paul in 
1881, and for a short time engaged in law 
practice with W. I'. Warner, Esq., of that city. 
June 23, 1881, he was appointed by Governor 
Pillsbury, Judge of the Sixth Judicial Dis- 
trict. Afterwards he was elected to the 
position for three successive terms of six years 
each — his election being effected each time 
without opposition or the drawing of party 
lines. His service on the bench has been that 



of an able lawyer, an accomplished jurist, and 
an honest, kind-hearted man. Of his judicial 
career and his general character, one who 
writes with full knowledge of the subject, 

says: 

"Judge Severance is a man of wide learn- 
ing, without as well as within the law. He 
is a great student, and in ancient as well as 
modern history has few equals. As a judge 
his decisions have been almost universally up- 
held by the higher courts. Large hearted ami 
generous though he is, he never allows his 
personal feelings to interpose between the 
sterner demands of justice, and his long years 
of service on the bench have endeared him to 
members of the bar and citizens generally. 
His popularity is best told in the statement 
thai although a Democrat in politics, he pre- 
sided on the bench of the District Court, in 
a district overwhelmingly Republican, for 
eighteen years, and during that time he never 
had a competitor for the nomination or elec- 
tion. The Judge is a companionable gentle- 
man, honored by all who know him and loved 
by those who best know his great heartedness 
and warm impulses." 

It is well said that Judge Severance is "a 
man of wide learning" aside from his profound 
knowledge of the law. His mind is well stored 
with general information. He is of literary 
taste and inclination, and is a most clear and 
accomplished writer. Some of his literary 
efforts extant are models of composition in 
style, expression, and force. Asa speaker he 
is able, earnest, polished, often eloquent and 
always entertaining and effective. He is a 
Democrat in politics, commonly in sympathy 
with the declared principles of his party, and 
uniformly supporting its National and State 
tickets. In local elections, however, he in- 
variably selects his candidate on the basis of 
personal ability, integrity and fitness for the 
position, no matter to what party he belongs, 
and he maintains his independence and sus- 
tains his manhood under all circumstances. 
Judge Severance was married June 10, 1858, 
to Elizabeth P. Van Horn, a native of Chi co- 
pee, Massachusetts, and a daughter of Lester 
Van Horn, of old Knickerbocker ancestry. 
Mis. Severance is descended from David Van 
Horn, who was one of the seven "Vans" 




r 



irz^z 



? < >, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



259 



among the first Dutch settlers of New York 
City, and who served on the first grand jury 
in "Manhattan,'' as the place was called in 
the good old days of Dutch dominion and con- 
trol in "New Amsterdam." The Judge and 
Mrs. Severance have been the parents of three 
children, viz.: Winthrop (!., who died in Man- 
kato at the age of 39; Frank Q., now residing 
in Nebraska, engaged in railroading, and Miss 
Nettie J. Severance, an accomplished young 
lady, who is proud of her membership in the 
Daughters of the Revolution, and who is at 
home with her parents in Mankato. 



HENRY M. RICHARDSON. 

Henry Macauly Richardson, of Rochester, 

Minnesota, was horn in Topshain, Orange 
county, Vermont, March 10, 1844. His parents, 
James and Lucinda (Orcutt) Richardson, were 
farming people, of Scotch-Irish extraction. 
Although they belonged to a rural community, 
they were among its more prominent members, 
and the father of our subject was known 
throughout the State as Major James Rich- 
ardson. Henry M. grew up in his native town, 
attending the common schools, then the high 
school, and. lastly, the Presbyterian Academy, 
at East Topsham. Before he had completed 
his course at the last-named institution, the 
Civil war broke out and lie enlisted, at the 
age of eighteen years, in the Fifteenth Ver- 
mont Regiment of volunteer infantry. The 
date of his enlistment was September 15, 1862, 
and he was mustered out and honorably dis- 
charged from service, with the rank of cor- 
poral, on August •'!. 1863. During the period 
of his service he took part in a good many 
skirmish engagements, and participated in the 
famous battle of Gettysburg. August 3, 1S63, 
he returned home from the war on account of 
the severe illness of his father, who died De- 
cember 15. 1863. Tt was then necessary 
for him to devote all his time to the man- 
agement of the farm and the affairs left 
by his father. In 1867 the home property was 
sold, and Mi-. Richardson set out for the West, 
his mother remaining behind. He located first 



in Missouri, and, after a brief sojourn iu that 
State, came to Minnesota and lived for a time 
at Elgin, then removed to Haverhill, where 
he purchased and settled upon a farm. The 
next year after he left the East, his mother, 
also, came West, joining him at Elgin, Minne- 
sota. Mr. Richardson resided upon his farm 
at Haverhill until the fall of 1881, when he was 
elected sheriff of Olmsted county, and removed 
to Rochester, the county seat, where he has 
ever since resided. The property at Haverhill, 
however, he retained and still owns. Under 
subsequent elections, Mr. Richardson served as 
sheriff for eleven years. Following this lengl liy 
term of official life was a short interval of com- 
mercial business in the grocei'3' line; then, in 
1893, Mr. Richardson was elected to the State 
Legislature, and, beginning with 1894, he pre- 
sided for four years over the council of the city 
of Rochester. Mr. Richardson has been a 
staunch Republican throughout his mature life, 
and while he has never been conspicuous as a 
politician, or an office-seeker, he has stood 
ready to serve, and to serve faithfully, in such 
honorable offices as he might be called to till. 
Resides being a veteran of the Grand Army 
of the Republic, Mr. Richardson belongs to 
the various orders of Masons, the Knights of 
Pythias, Odd Fellows and Workmen. On 
January 11. 1870, Mr. Richardson was married, 
at Janesville, Wisconsin, to Sarah J. McCrillis, 
of Salem, Massachusetts. Three children were 
born to them: Harold J., William Burdette, 
who are students in the Law Department of 
the University of .Minnesota, and Edith May, 
a student at Northwestern University, Evau- 
ston, Illinois. 



BENJAMIN D. WOODMANSEE. 

Benjamin DeWitt Woodmansee was born 
in Liberty township, Butler county, Ohio. 
February 9, 1840, the son of Lorenzo Dow 
and Mariah (Van Gorden) Woodmansee. The 
founder of the family in Butler county was 
Daniel Woodmansee, a native of New Jersey, 
whose father, James Woodmansee, was an 
officer of the Revolution, and whose mother 



260 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



was a Worden, of the family from which 
Lieutenant Worden, of Monitor fame, is de- 
scended. Daniel Woodmansee, accompanied 

by his family and parents, came to Ohio in 
1809, and purchased and settled upon a tract 
of land called Sugar Valley, in Liberty town 
ship, Butler county, where he passed the 
remainder of his life. His wife was Rachel 
(Cushman) Woodmansee, of Pennsylvania, a 
cousin of Charlotte Cushman, the great his- 
trionic genius. Daniel and Rachel Woodman- 
see were the parents of seven children, and 
became very prominent in the young commu- 
nity they had joined, being for years practically 
the supporters of its Methodist church, while 
Daniel figured actively in the official life of 
his township and county, and served for ten 
years in the State Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives. A few years after coining to 
Ohio, he sent East for his brothers and sisters, 
who, with their families, joined him in Duller 
county. Benjamin Van Gorden, the maternal 
grandfather, came when a young man and set- 
tled at Princeton, in Butler county. The Van 
Gordens were a highly respected and influen- 
tial family, strictly Methodist in religion, and 
Benjamin Van Gorden was one of the leaders 
in the establishment, in 1835, of a Methodist 
Episcopal church at Princeton. The marriage 
of Mariah Van Gorden to Lorenzo Dow 
Woodmansee was celebrated in Butler county, 
in the year 1N27 or 1828. He was a native of 
Pennsylvania, born November HI. 1806, but 
early came to Ohio, and soon after his mar- 
riage settled upon a farm in Liberty township. 
I!. I). Woodmansee, our subject, was orphaned 
at the age of two years by the death of his 
mother, who left, also, four older children. 
Her death was caused by lockjaw, and the 
calamity was felt, not only by her immediate 
family, but by the whole community, its older 
members, after more than half a century, still 
remembering her with affection and praise. 
Her death occasioned many changes in the 
home. The children were dispersed among 
relatives, the little Benjamin, with one sister. 
being received into (he household of his 
grandparents, Van Gordon. About two years 
later his father took a second wife — a widow 



named Williamson, with three sons. Mr. 
Woodmansee's children were then recalled to 
their home, excepting Benjamin, who remained 
with his mother's parents. When he was 
twelve years old his grandfather died, and 
two years afterwards the house was consumed 
by tire; and in this disaster our subject dis- 
tinguished himself, saving by his presence of 
mind the life of his grandmother, whose bodily 
and mental strength had become enfeebled, 
and that of her aged nurse. Benjamin now 
toade his home with his father, who had mean- 
time become engaged in the training of tine 
horses, the famous pacer, Pocahontas, being 
among the early triumphs of his training art. 
About 1860, Lorenzo D. Woodmansee sold his 
farm and removed to Dayton, Ohio. Meantime 
his second wife had died, leaving four little 
(laughters — half sisters to Benjamin. In Day- 
ton the senior Woodmansee conducted another 
training farm until 1868, when he retired from 
active business, to spend the remainder of his 
life among his nine children, seven of whom 
were now married. In 1861, B. D. Woodman- 
see, together with an old friend, opened a 
photograph gallery at Toledo. Ohio. Mr. Wood- 
mansee having learned the business at Cin- 
cinnati during the previous year. At Toledo 
he was attacked by hemorrhages of the lungs, 
which later caused his decease. He gave up 
his business, returned to Dayton and. respond- 
ing to medical advice, came in February to 
Minnesota. For several months he was en- 
gaged at St. Anthony in making steroopticon 
views of Minnesota scenery. In the following 
September he went to Indianapolis, Indiana, 
and for nearly five years tilled a position there 
with Da vies & Merritt, photographers. Tn the 
spring of 1866 he was engaged to construct the 
Miami valley race course on the Cincinnati. 
Hamilton & Springdale turnpike, upon its 
completion he being made superintendent. In 
October, 1866, Mr. Woodmansee was married 
to Miss Halt ie Davis, at Hamilton. Ohio, which 
was also her birthplace. She was born October 
14, 1843, and lived in that vicinity until her 
marriage. In October, 1867, Mr. Woodmansee 
removed with his wife's people to St. Paul. 
Minnesota, where his father-in-law, Mr. Aza- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



261 



riah Davis, bough! what was then known as 
the Larpenteur farm. In 1870 Mr. Davis leased 
this farm to the St. Paul Driving Park Asso- 
ciation, which concern eventually purchased 
it. In 1881 it again changed hands, to Com- 
modore Kittson. Mr. Woodmansee, who had 
been manager for the Association, continued 
as superintendent of the Kittson establish- 
ment until 1880, when failing health necessi- 
tated a sojourn in California. To his 
disappointment, however, the Pacific climate 
disagreed with him and, returning shortly to 
Minnesota, he purchased a home at Anoka. 
In the fall of 1893 he sold this home and again 
went to California. Early in the spring he 
started to return, but tarried in Arkansas 
during the cool months. The climate of that 
State proved beneficial and, returning to 
Minnesota with improved health, he spent the 
summer at Northtield and Minneapolis. In 
the autumn of 1804, he went to Missouri and 
bought a large fruit farm in the Ozark region 
near Republic. For a year his health was ex- 
cellent, then gradually declined again; and 
reluctantly disposing of his beautiful home, he 
returned once more to Minneapolis, where the 
last summer of his life was passed. In the 
fall of 1800, still in quest of health, he set out 
for Phoenix, Arizona, by way of San Antonio, 
Texas; but he got no further than the latter 
city, where he suffered severely from his old 
enemy, hemorrhage. As soon as his physician 
pronounced it safe to travel, he started home- 
ward, stopping for a visit at Eureka Springs, 
Arkansas, where he arrived on January 4. 
But the attack at San Antonio had been the 
initiative of a fatal condition and, on the 9th 
of April, 1897, he passed away, at the age of 
fifty-seven years. His death was mourned by 
a host of friends, to whom his gentle, warm- 
hearted nature, as also his fair and open 
business methods, had endeared him. He is 
survived by Mrs. Woodmansee and one son. 
Algernon R., who was born at St. Paul, Octo- 
ber 12, 1867. Another son, Leon, born ten 
years later, died in infancy. Two brothers of 
Mr. Woodmansee are living: D. W. Wood- 
mansee, prominent for some years as traveling 
manager for Commodore Kittson, now located 



at San Diego, California, and A. J. Woodman- 
see, a resident of Chester, Ohio. Mrs. Wood- 
mansee is the only child of Azariah and 
Caroline (Mondy) Davis, also of Butler county, 
Ohio. In 1X<;7 Hie family removed to Minne- 
sota, locating at Anoka. Here .Mr. Davis died 
in 1894, his wife surviving him and being now 
in her eightieth year. In all the journeyings 
of Mr. Woodmansee, he was accompanied by 
his wife, who rejoiced with him in the tem- 
porary restoration of his health in their de- 
lightful Ozark retreat, and soothed the later 
painful months of his life by her constant 
ministrations. 



ROBERT W. AKIN. 



In recording tin 1 events of a life which is 
still several years on the hither side of its 
prime, the biographer necessarily finds himself 
lacking data for more than a brief sketch. Of 
most men under thirty, even of those whose 
completed lives will furnish substantial mate 
rial for lengthy memoirs, there is little suit- 
aide for record in a work of this kind. The 
subject of this sketch has, on the contrary, at 
the age of twenty-nine years, a sufficient his 
tory and business career to entitle him to 
inclusion among the prominent men of Minne- 
sota. Robert Wilson Akin was born in Pat- 
terson, Putnam county, New York, February 
24. 1871. His father, the late T. W. Akin, was 
a prominent merchant of that place. The 
maiden name of his mother was Blauvelt, and 
on the paternal side he traces his ancestry 
hack to the nobility of England, and on the 
maternal side to the early Dutch settlement 
on the island of Manhattan. The death of his 
father occurred May 20. 1807. His mother, 
who survives, is still a resident of the Empire 
State. Robert W. was one of three children, 
of whom himself and a sister are living. His 
common school education, which he obtained 
in the public schools of his native town, was 
supplemented by an academic course in an 
institution at Saxton River, Vermont, from 
which he graduated in 1800. In the following 
September he came West, located at Cando. 
North Dakota, and accepted a position as 



2f>2 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



bookkeeper in a banking house of that place. 
hi this position he remained about a year, 
gaining his initial experience in financial busi- 
ness, in which field of activity he was early 
to attain to high office. Following this lie 
purchased an interest in the Michigan City 
Hank, of Michigan City, North Dakota, and 
was appointed cashier. In 1896, owing to his 
father's ill health, he disposed of his interest 
in the bank and went East to settle up the 
home estate. This task accomplished, he re- 
turned to the West and settled at Anoka, 
Minnesota, where he has since made his home. 
He accepted the position of cashier of the 
State Bank of Anoka, which position he still 
holds. Since leaving North Dakota as a place 
of residence, he has kept in touch with its 
financial affairs, and is president of a thriving 
banking concern of the town of Harvey, in 
that State. In politics Mr. Akin is conserva- 
tive, bul by no means lacking in interest in 
whatever pertains to the welfare of his State 
or the Nation. He is a public-spirited man. 
and is especially ambitious and enthusiastic 
concerning the future of the city of Anoka. 
Since coming of age Mr. Akin has been a 
married man. having been united, December 
29, 1892, at Concord. New Hampshire, to Miss 
Bertha E. Gilbert, daughter of the Rev. A. S. 
Gilbert, now of Boston, Massachusetts. Two 
children have been born of their marriage. 
Mr. and Mrs. Akin are regular attendants at 
the Baptist church of Anoka. The broad circle 
of friends which Mr. Akin has attached to him 
during the few years of his residence in Minne- 
sota points to a future of indefinitely increas- 
ing social influence. 



PETER 15. SMITH. 



This subject worthily represents an old 
Pennsylvania family of Smiths, of Scottish 
origin. His father, Peter J. Smith, was born 
in 1802, and in 1835 married Eve Pent/., who, 
like himself, was a native of Pennsylvania, 
she. however, being of (ierman descent. She 
was fifteen years the junior of her husband, 
and bore him the goodly family of seven sons 
and a daughter. They were farmer folk, their 



land lying near the town of Wellsville, in the 
county of York. In this rural home. Peter 
Bentz, who was their sixth child, was born 
on February 9, 1851, and here grew in stature 
and strength of limb while his character de- 
veloped habits of industry and studiousness. 
At the age of seventeen he began to teach in 
a neighboring school. How many young men, 
afterwards prominenl in business or profes- 
sional life, have entered their respective 
careers from across the platform of the coun- 
try school! — the explanation being, doubtless, 
that the most able and earnest youths of a (lis 
trict are naturally sought as its instructors. 
At the close of his first term he went to 
Nebraska, securing a position as teacher near 
Bellevue, in Sarpy county. Here he remained 
for two terms, then, in 1870, went to Huluth, 
Minnesota, and entered, at the age of nineteen, 
the broad field of industry in which he has 
since worked with ever increasing success. 
lie assisted in the construction of a grain 
elevator, the first to be built in this section of 
the country, and initiated the now flourishing 
grain industry, in Duluth, by himself shoveling 
its first carload of wheat into the new elevator, 
of which he became manager. C. B. New- 
comb, president of the elevator company, was 
at that time negotiating in wheat, with St. 
Paul as his headquarters; and after managing 
the Duluth elevator for three years, young 
Smith was summoned by Mr. Newcomb to 
assist him at St. Paul, and four years later — 
1S7S — was admitted to the firm as junior 
partner. In the autumn of the following year, 
however, the business of this concern was dis- 
continued, and Mi'. Smith obtained a position 
in St. Paul in connection with the New York 
commission house of David Dows & Co., the 
well-known name of whose western manager 
was .1. Q. Adams. In 1880 he made another 
change, associating himself with Barnes & 
Magill. operating from Fargo. Dakota. This 
firm was incorporated in the following year 
under the style of Northern Pacific Elevator 
Company, and Mr. Smith was appointed 
superintendent, becoming also a stock-holder. 
In 1SSS he severed his connection with the 
Northern Pacific Company, and attained to his 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



263 



present responsible position as general man- 
ager of the St. Anthony & Dakota Elevator 
Company. This colossal corporation owns one 
hundred and fifty-four elevators, operating 
along the line of the Great Northern Railway 
through the three States of Minnesota and the 
two Dakotas. Its place in the grain enterprise 
of the Northwest is an important one; indeed 
there are few that can compete with it in the 
extent and substantiality of its business. Its 
annual operations amount to from ten to thir- 
teen million bushels of grain, ninety per cent 
of its transactions being based upon actual 
purchase. Mr. Smith is a man of high repute 
among his associates; and as thrift and in- 
tegrity haye given him a clear title to the 
influential position he holds in the business 
world, so the corresponding virtues of cordial- 
ity and courtesy make him a welcome presence 
in social circles. He belongs to various clubs. 
the most notable of which are the Minneapolis, 
the Minikahda and the Minnetonka: and he 
is a Mason of the thirty-second degree in the 
Scottish bite, and of the Royal Arch degree, 
York bianch of Masons. In July, 1893, Mr. 
Smith was married to Mrs. Lillie D. Ailes, an 
Ohio lady; and together they preside over the 
hospitalities of their pleasant home on Six- 
teenth street, in Minneapolis, and participate 
in the activities of the Church of the Re- 
deemer, of which they are members. It will 
be rightly inferred from this sketch that its 
subject's path in life has not been a thorny 
one. Indeed, it has been singularly free from 
the vicissitudes which so many young men 
experience while seeking their place and forte 
in the world. Determining, while yet in his 
teens, upon a business that suited both his 
abilities and his tastes, Mr. Smith steadfastly 
followed along that line, which has led him. 
in the fullness of his prime, to his present 
commanding position. 



REUBEN S. GOODFELLOW. 

Reuben Simeon Goodfellow, a leading mer- 
chant of Minneapolis, was born in the village 
of Hyde, Lancashire. England, October 28, 
1*10. His parents were Simeon Goodfellow, 



of Scotch ancestry, and his mother, Mary 
Cheethani-Goodfellow, of English parentage. 
Reuben was the third of six children, of whom 
four grew to maturity. The family emigrated 
to America, in 1841, when Reuben was an in- 
fant. They first settled in Philadelphia, but 
soon after removed to Troy, New York. His 
father was a mechanical engineer of an orig- 
inal and inventive turn of 7nind. He brought 
with him one of the first power looms used in 
this country, and was the patentee of several 
inventions, some of which were of considerable 
utility, but which brought to others more 
profit than to himself. The boy attended the 
common schools of Troy until he was nine 
years of age, when he was placed in a man- 
ufacturing business, where he remained for 
five years. At the age of fourteen he entered 
a general store in the suburbs of Troy, where 
lie received his first mercantile experience. 
From the country store he entered a dry goods 
house in Troy, where he remained for several 
years, passing through all grades of employ- 
ment. In 1850 he entered the dry goods house 
of (!. Y. S. Quackenbush, and there remained 
until 18(52. He then enlisted, as a private, in 
the One Hundred and Sixty-ninth Regiment, 
New York Volunteer Infantry, and went to 
the front. After his discharge and return to 
civil life lie took up his old employment in 
the dry goods store of Flagg & Company, at 
Troy, and continued with this firm for four 
years. He then engaged with Flagg & Frear, 
also in the dry goods line, where he remained 
four years, occupying the responsible position 
of buyer as well as salesman. He then became 
a member of the firm of W. C. Winnie & Com 
pany, in the retail dry goods trade, which part- 
nership continued until 1877, when he sold his 
interest to Mr. Winnie. Mr. Goodfellow then 
joined Mr. W. H. Eastman — who had been en- 
gaged in Hie wholesale dry goods business in 
New York — in a trip to the West, proposing, 
if a favorable location could be found, to en- 
gage in business together. Of the many places 
visited Mr. Goodfellow was most favorably 
impressed with Minneapolis, but they could 
find no vacant store in that city. They also 
considered St. Louis a good location, but ex- 



264 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



perienced a like difficulty there. They made 
arrangements in both places to be informed by 

wire when a vacant store, in a favorable lo- 
cation, could be obtained. Though Mr. Good- 
fellow preferred to locate in Minneapolis, his 
associate favored St. Louis, so it was agreed 
to accept whichever location should first offer. 
One day in the early part of 1878 a telegram 
■a as received at five o'clock P. M., announcing 
that a store could be had in Minneapolis. At 
six o'clock of the same evening Mr. Eastman 
was en route for that city. Early the following 
morning a similar message came from St. 
Louis. A lease was taken of a store at Nos. 
243 and 245 Nicollet avenue, where the firm of 
Goodfellow & Eastman commenced in the dry 
goods business April 10, 1878. On the 1st of 
July, following, they made a contract for the 
building of the fine store now occupied by R. 
S. Goodfellow & Company, which was, at that 
time, by far the largest and most elegant store 
in the city, and none now excel it in con- 
venience. It was occupied on the 28th of Oc- 
tober, following. Mr. Eastman retired from 
the firm in February, 1885, and Mr. W. S. Hay. 
who had been the New York buyer for (he old 
firm, became associated with Mr. Goodfellow, 
under the present firm name of R. S. Goodfel- 
low & Company. Mr. Ray died February 11, 
1893, and Mr. Goodfellow has since continued 
the business alone. He has always given his 
personal attention to the details of the busi- 
ness, and through industry and prudent man- 
agement has built up one of the largest and 
most influential commercial houses in Minne- 
apolis. With a natural adaptness for trade 
and strict integrity in all his dealings, he has 
been eminently successful as a business man. 
and commands the respect and confidence of 
the community where he resides. Mr. Good- 
fellow was married in July, 1866, d> Miss 
Sarah 0. Ives of Troy, New York. They were 
the parents of five children, of whom two only 
are now living: Mis. Marion C. Lewis of 
Minneapolis, and William E. Goodfellow, a 
practicing attorney in Minneapolis. Mrs. Good- 
fellow died in 1S74. Mr. Goodfellow married, 
his present wife, who was Miss Martha E. Aus- 
tin, at North Adams. Massachusetts, in 1S77. 



Their residence is at No. 1006 Sixth avenue, 
south, one of the attractive dwellings of a city 
of beautiful homes. Mr. Goodfellow is an 
active member of the Episcopal church. He 
is also a member of the Masonic order in chap 
ter and commandery. At the age of fifty-nine 
years he seems to possess the same power of 
application and the devotion to business which 
characterized his early life. He has pursued 
his business career long after a competency 
has been secured from an ambition to employ, 
for a useful purpose, the talents which a kind 
providence has endowed him with, rather than 
from love of accumulation. As an evidence 
of the estimation in which Mr. Goodfellow is 
held by his employes if may be stated that 
some of them have been with him continuously 
since, and even before he first commenced 
business in Minneapolis, and all speak of his 
kindness, reliability and close attention to 
business. In politics he is a pronounced Re- 
publican, but has never sought or accepted 
public office, having no ambition in that direc- 
tion. 



FRED O. PILLSBURY. 



The late Fred Carleton Pillsbury, of Minne- 
apolis, was born August 27, 1S.">2, and died 
May 15, 1802. The span of his life was but 
forty years, yet within that brief period he 
achieved such financial success and won such 
honor — that best of honor which is the loving 
esteem of one's own community — as seldom 
crown the gray hairs of three score and ten. 
He was the youngest of a group of four men 
whose combined achievements in Minnesota 
have made the name of Pillsbury one of the 
foremost of the Slate, and world renowned in 
connection with the products of their vast 
milling industry. The other three of Ih: 1 
group are. ex-Governor John S. Pillsbury — 
uncle of Fred C. — George A. and Charles A. 
— his father and brother, respectively. The 
native place of E. < '. Pillsbury is Concord, 
New Hampshire, and it was here that he was 
educated. His brother Charles was a gradu- 
ate of Dartmouth College, but Fred was eager 
to engage in business, and soon after his 




w 6. 




I 



IUOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



26 = 



graduation from the high school of Concord, 
lie came to Minneapolis and entered the em- 
ploy of his uncle, John S. Pillsbury, who was 
then conducting a flourishing wholesale and 
retail trade in hardware. Fred was only 
eighteen, hut he was essentially of what may 
be called the business temperament — indus- 
trious, sensible, courteous, possessing the 
fine balance which is at once reposeful and 
alert; and these natural traits, developed and 
directed by his uncle, made him at an early 
age a thorough going business man. Tn 187fi 
he became a member of the firm of Charles A. 
Pillshurv & Company, the then largest milling 
concern in the world, and he had fourteen 
years' active experience in that concern. 
Upon the sale of the Pillshurv properties to 
an English syndicate, and the coincident es- 
tablishment of the Pillsbury-Washburn Flour 
Milling Company, Fred C, uniting with other 
business men of the city, organized the North- 
western Consolidated Milling Company, which 
promptly took its place as second only to the 
Pillsbury-Washburn Company. Mr. Pillsbury 
became a director and member of the manag- 
ing committee of the Northwestern corpora 
tion, and was actively engaged in the manage- 
ment of its business until cut off by death. 
Extensive and absorbing as were his personal 
business interests, Mr. Pillsbury found time 
to devote to many other enterprises, both pub- 
lic and private. Tie was a director of the 
First National Bank of Minneapolis, also a 
director of the Swedish-American Bank; and 
he was an influential member of the commit- 
tee which directed the building and furnishing 
of the beautiful Minneapolis Club House. His 
last day before being stricken down with the 
malady which ended his life was spent in the 
cluli house, in attending to the final details 
of fitting it for occupancy. Not only in his 
specialty of milling, but in general affairs. 
Mr. Pillsbury's judgment was much valued 
and sought. In agriculture he was broadly 
interested. He was for two years president 
of the State Agricultural Society, and con- 
tributed freely of his time and personal ac- 
tivity to the conducting of the State fair. He 
established a model farm at Wavzata, Minne- 



sota — one hundred and twenty acres border- 
ing on Lake Minnetonka — which he stocked 
with blooded horses and cattle. This farm 
was one of the finest in the Northwest, and 
the source of much justifiable pride and satis 
faction to its proprietor. Mr. Pillsbury was 
a Republican, but never aspired to political 
distinction. He felt a deep interest in the 
vital issues of the day, and was solicitous 
for pure government, working with enthu- 
siasm for the selection of good and able men 
— men like himself, had his modesty permitted 
him to recognize the fact. As a Mason, Mr. 
Pillsbury was prominent and advanced, being 
a member of the Scottish Rite and a Knight 
Templar. He entered with much enthusiasm 
into the activities of the order, and was among 
the first who became interested in the build- 
ing of the Masonic Temple. Mr. Pillsbury 
was married October 10, 1S70\ to Miss Alice 
Cook, daughter of Samuel Cook, of Quincy, 
Massachusetts. Six children were born to 
them, four of whom — Harriot, Carleton, Helen 
and Alice — are living. The elegant family 
residence, located on Tenth street, in Minne- 
apolis, was built, decorated and furnished 
under the personal supervision of Mr. Pills- 
bury. He was endowed with a fine artistic 
taste, and his home was made sumptuous with 
exquisite and costly works of art. He was 
a most devoted husband and father, and 
dearly loved his home, which, in all its ap- 
pointments, he made an expression of his 
personality. Mr. Pillsbury's death fell like 
a thunderbolt upon this prosperous and har- 
monious household; yet his family formed but 
tlic center of a vast circle of mourners, whose 
sorrow found expression in many a loving 
tribute. The Minneapolis Tribune, editorially, 
said in part: 

"Fred C. Pillsbury was a citizen by whom 
Minneapolis and Minnesota set great store. 
He was a representative modern business man 
of the best type, and the many interests with 
which he identified himself were great factors 
in the prosperity of this region. He was a 
liberal patron of art and letters, and a man 
of broad charity. The loss of this big-hearted. 
progressive business man will be deeply re- 
gretted in this communitv." 



266 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



The late John Blanchard, of journalistic 
fame, said in the Minneapolis Times: 

"The death of Fred C. Pillsbury will be sin 
cerely mourned by thousands in this city. The 
youngest of the famous Pillsbury family, he 
was a familiar figure in the city. He was a 
man of marked individuality, and outside of 
business hours knew how to enjoy life. As 
a patron of out-door sports he was well known. 
Among those who knew him best, no man 
was more warmly esteemed or sincerely 
trusted. A great deal might be written of the 
untimeliness of his taking off. Indeed it is 
one of the first thoughts, when one contem- 
plates this demise, in the strength of middle 
age, of a man who had everything to live for, 
and who gave every promise of making a just 
and equitable use of the fortune Providence 
had showered upon him. His position in life 
was assured at an age when most men are 
struggling for a competency, but he lies dead 
at an age when most men just begin to feel 
their power. Surely such an apparent con 
tradiction of nature's laws must lead back to 
a deeper cause than the casuist sees. The 
Pillsbury family, whose career has been so 
conspicuous and so honorable in the annals 
of Minnesota, will have the deepest sympathy 
of the community in their great sorrow." 

And following are the simple, heart-felt 
words of ex-Governor Pillsbury, the uncle 
with whom our subject was for years inti- 
mately associated in business, and who knew 
him through and through: 

"Fred was a man of uncommon ability and 
judgment; one of the most strictly honest men 
that ever lived in this city. He never swerved 
from anything that he thought was right, and 
was perfectly reliable under any and all cir- 
cumstances. It was impossible to get him 
to do anything that was calculated to wrong 
another person. He was conscientious, kind 
and affectionate, thinking everything of his 
wife, children and friends. As a business man 
he w r as one of the most safe and reliable in 
the State. His mind was evenly balanced, and 
his sagacity was something wonderful. I con- 
sider that he was one of the finest specimens 
of young business men to be found anywhere. 
As a clerk he was popular, and made many 
friends; as a member of the milling linn hi' 
was a man who attended strictly to business, 
and was always considerate and popular. He 
treated everyone courteously, and made a 
world of friends and acquaintances. He was 



always averse to taking any public position, 
but he was competent enough to till any of 
them. His modesty showed out prominently 
at all times. I consider him an example for 
young men to pattern after in this respect. 
He was honorable to the letter. He always 
showed a great interest and taste for any- 
thing pertaining to air. and had made a tine 
collection of paintings. I believe that this 
city has lost one of her best citizens in his 
death." 

Mr. Pillsbury was not a church member, 
but he attended, with his family, the First 
Baptist church of Minneapolis. 



JOHN T. FANNING. 



John Thomas Fanning. C. E., of Minne- 
apolis, well known as a general civil engineer, 
and as especially prominent in hydraulic en- 
gineering, was born at Norwich, Connecticut, 
December 31, 1837. His parents were John 
H. and Elizabeth iPridde) Fanning, and he 
comes of an old and honorable New England 
ancestry. Among his remote paternal ances- 
tors was Edmund Gilbert Fanning, who, in 
1652, emigrated from Ireland and settled at 
Groton, Connecticut, and became the first of 
the family in America. He is also descended 
from Lieut. Thomas Tracy, who came to 
America from England in 1636. Both Gilbert 
Fanning and Lieutenant Tracy, as the printed 
records attest, were of noble ancestry. His 
grandfather, Capt. John Fanning, was an 
assistant surgeon in the American army dur- 
ing the war of the Revolution. Mr. Fanning 
was educated in the schools of his native town, 
and al the outbreak of the war of the Rebel 
lion, had completed a course of study in 
architecture and civil engineering. He has a 
good military record. During the great Re- 
bellion he served in the Third Regiment of 
Connecticut Volunteers, during its full term, 
and after the war was a field officer in the 
Connecticut State .Militia, lie began his pro- 
fessional work in Norwich, in 1862, and was 
ailing city engineer for eight years, during 
which time he designed the public water sup- 
ply, the cemetery, and other improvements. 




The. C&fitwy Pidtistwuj &. Enyeawig Co Chicane 



/f^U**/ /&. &#a^*. 



BTOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



267 



He also planned and supervised the construc- 
tion of many mills, public and private build- 
ings, bridges, etc., in eastern New England. 
In 1872 he removed to Manchester, New 
Hampshire, to supervise the construction of 
the public water supply, and while in that, city 
he designed the principal church, the opera 
house, and many business blocks and private 
residences. As a citizen of Manchester he 
was a member of the board of education and 
chairman of the high school committee. In 
time his reputation as a hydraulic engineer 
had extended, and, in 1881, he was employed 
by a select committee to report upon an addi- 
tional water supply for New York and Brook- 
lyn, and certain cities of the Hudson river 
valley. After investigation, he advised as the 
source of the contemplated supply, the upper 
Hudson, where that river emerges from the 
Adirondacks. He was retained by the Boston 
water board and by the Metropolitan water 
board of Massachusetts as an expert in their 
condemnation cases, and by the Chicago 
Drainage Commission, and by other cities and 
corporations as an expert witness in important 
legal cases. Mr. Fanning has been a citizen 
of Minneapolis since 1886. In 18S5 he re- 
ported on improvements of the water power 
of the Mississippi at that city, and in 1886 he 
was appointed chief engineer and agent of the 
St. Anthony Falls Water Power Company. 
Subsequently he was appointed consulting 
engineer of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Mani- 
toba, and its successor, the Great Northern 
Railway, and was made vice-president of the 
Minneapolis Union Railway. Becoming estab- 
lished in his profession at Minneapolis, Mr. 
Fanning has been actively employed from the 
first. His field of operations has been very 
extensive. Among the works directed from 
his office here have been improvements in 
various water powers and public water sup- 
plies; a comprehensive plan for the drainage 
of three thousand square miles of the famous 
"hard wheat" land in the valley of the Red 
River of the North, in Minnesota; the con 
struction of the great dam, public water sup- 
ply and electric light system of Austin, 
Texas; the large water powers on the Missouri 



river at Great Falls and near Helena, Mon- 
tana, and on the Spokane river, at Spokane, 
Washington. His large practical experience 
in, and his study and investigation of en- 
gineering science, have brought results im- 
portant to the world. He is the patentee of 
valuable improvements in slow-burning build- 
ing construction, in turbine water wheels, in 
pumping engines, and in steam boilers. He 
has written a number of papers and lectures 
on various engineering subjects, and has be- 
come distinguished as the author of "A 
Treatise on Hydraulic and Water Supply 
Engineering." This work is in general use as 
a text-book and reference manual by classes 
in engineering throughout the country, and, 
in 1899, had reached its fourteenth edition, 
and has long been held as a standard author- 
ity. He is a fellow of the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, an 
ex-director of the American Society of Civil 
Engineers, and an ex-president of the Ameri- 
can Water Works Association. Mr. Fanning 
was married at Norwich, Connecticut, June 
14, 1865, to Miss M. Louise Bensley, a daugh- 
ter of James and Maria Bensley. Mr. and 
Mrs. Fanning have three children, a son and 
two daughters. 



JOHN R. CAREY. 



One of the oldest and best-known Minne- 
sotians, and one of the earliest pioneer resi- 
dents of Duluth, is Hon. John R. Carey, now 
retired from the active duties of life, and at 
the age of three score and ten passing the 
afternoon of life in comfort and peace, with 
the perfect satisfaction that attends the con- 
sciousness of a career rightly lived, and of 
duties and obligations faithfully performed. 
He came to Superior in 1855, and to Duluth 
in 1857, and since the latter year has always 
been a resident of the Zenith City. Mr. Carey 
was born at Bangor, Maine, March .*?, 1830. 
Both his parents were natives of the province 
of New Brunswick, his father, John C. Carey, 
being of Scotch-Irish, and his mother, whose 
maiden name was Julia Terry, of English 



268 



P.IOGRAPIIY OF .MINNESOTA. 



descent. His father was a lumberman and 
merchant, and upon his death, in 1S44, his 
widow conducted the business for sonic four 
years. During this time her son John at- 
tended the Bangor public schools, and sub- 
sequently at tended and graduated from the 
high school at New Britain, Connecticut. In 
1N.">:!, Mr. Carey, then a young man of twenty- 
three, formed one of a colony of eighty-five 
New Englanders that emigrated from the East 
to the then new Territory of Minnesota, in- 
tending to take up and settle upon tracts of 
government land, and engage in farming. The 
site of their settlement was intended to be on 
the Cannon river, near the present city of 
Faribault. They came by way of Chicago and 
Galena, and at the latter town took passage 
on the steamboat "Clarion" — which in after 
years was sunk in the Minnesota river — and 
soon arrived at their destination. But the 
wild condition of the country, and its. to 
them, uninviting character generally, had 
such a depressing and discouraging effect 
upon the colonists that two-thirds of them 
soon returned to New England They were 
disappointed in their expectations of secur- 
ing government lands for their farms, for 
speculators and "land sharks" had secured all 
available tracts in the region, and virtually 
monopolized that section of the Territory. 
Those of the colonists who remained, dis- 
persed themselves through the country. Some 
of them located in St. Paul. Others went to 
Stillwater, St. Anthony, St. Peter, and else- 
where. Mr. Carey became a clerk and finally 
foreman in Luke Marvin's wholesale and retail 
boot and shoe house, on East Third street, in 
St. Paul, where he was engaged for some time. 
M.i.x li\ L855, Mr. Carey left St. Paul for the 
head of Lake Superior. He located in the then 
promising village of Superior, and opened a 
store for the sale of a stock of boots and shoes 
which he had brought with him from Chicago. 
He made a squatter's claim on the unsurveyed 
land on the Minnesota side of the bay. between 
what is now Duluth and West Duluth. By 
virtue of his ownership of this claim he was 
considered a citizen of Minnesota, and at the 
October election, 1855 — which was the first 



election in St. Louis county — he was one of 
the nine Republicans who voted for Mr. 
William R. Marshall for delegate to Congress: 
the total number of votes cast in the county 
was one hundred and fourteen. Subsequently 
he abandoned his Minnesota claim — now worth 
millions of dollars — and continued to reside 
and do business in Superior. In 1857 — a year 
of greal business depression throughout the 
Northwest and the country generally — he was 
compelled to leave Superior, and thereupon 
located in what was then called Oneota, now 
a part of Duluth, and engaged in lumbering 
and farming. In 1859 he was elected Probate 
Judge of St. Louis county, and served by re- 
election four terms, or twelve years, leaving 
the office in 1871. Meantime, in 1869, he was 
elected clerk of the district court, which 
office did not conflict with his holding that of 
Probate Judge. He was clerk of the court 
for twelve years, or until 1882. when he re- 
signed to take the position of register of the 
United States land office at Duluth. to which 
he had been appointed by President 
Arthur. He held the office until after the 
advent of the Cleveland administration, in 
1885. In 1 scu he was appointed Federal court 
commissioner by Judge ]{. K. Nelson, and this 
position he still holds. It may also be men- 
tioned that while he was clerk of the court he 
served one term as city justice of Duluth. His 
entire public and official service, extending 
over a period of forty years, constitutes a most 
enviable record. Mr. Carey has for a long 
time been prominently connected with polit- 
ical affairs. Upon reaching his majority he 
was a Free Soil Democrat. His first vote was 
cast for Franklin Pierce for President, in 1S.Y2. 
and his second for Thomas H. Seymour for 
Governor of Connecticut. He became a Re- 
publican upon the organization of the party. 
in 1854, and at the spring election in St. Paul 
that year, voted for Mr. William K. Marshall 
for mayor, against David Olmstead, Demo 
crat As stated, he was one of the pioneer 
Republicans of the Lake Superior district, and 
was one of the nine Republicans of St. Louis 
county who cast their ballots for General 
Marshall in 1855. In 1864, and again in 1865, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



269 



he was a Republican candidate for the Legis- 
lature, but his district was overwhelmingly 
Democratic at the time and he was defeated. 
He was always active in maintaining his 
party's interests, but since 1885 he has been, to 
use a common expression, practically "out of 
politics." He is of literary tastes and abili- 
ties, and interested in studies and investiga- 
tions of that character. He was one of the 
founders and a charter member of the Duluth 
Historical Association, and has contributed 
much valuable literature to its historical sec- 
tion. He is well known as the author of the 
"History of Duluth and Northwestern Minne- 
sota," a work showing large research and of 
much value as a standard authority on the 
region of which it treats. Mr. Carey was 
married in St. Paul in September, 1854, to 
.Miss Hannah E. Terry, a native of New York 
State, and who came to Minnesota before her 
husband. They have six children — Richard, 
Ida, John, Mary. William and Ellen — three 
of whom live in Duluth. 



ROGER S. MUNGER. 

Roger S. Munger, present Register of Deeds 
for St. Louis county, a territorial pioneer of 
Minnesota, and for years one of the leading 
business men of the city of Duluth, was born 
at North Madison, Connecticut, February 25, 
1830. He is a son of Sherman and Lucretia 
(Benton) Munger, both natives of Connecticut, 
and of old New England families. His 
maternal ancestors were among the very first 
settlers of New Haven county, Connecticut. 
Mr. Munger's boyhood was passed in New 
Haven, to which city the family had removed. 
He was educated in the public schools and 
completed a course at the Hopkins Grammar 
School, preparatory to entering Yale College. 
At the age of twenty-one he engaged in busi- 
ness, and for six years had charge of a large 
music store in New Haven. At the end of this 
time he came West, spent one year in Iowa, 
and, in 1857, came to St. Paul, where he en- 
gaged in the music business with his brother, 



Russell C. Munger. The "Munger Brothers 
Orchestra" was a well-known musical or- 
ganization in the early days of St. Paul, com- 
prising R. S. Munger, R, C. Munger and 
William H. Munger. Roger S. was largely 
instrumental in securing the capital and or- 
ganizing the company that built the old Grand 
Opera House in St. Paul, on Wabasha, between 
Third and Fourth streets. In 18G9 Mr. Munger 
settled in Duluth and formed a partnership 
in the lumber business with Mr. R. A. Gray, 
which continued about six years. In 1872 the 
firm of Munger. Markell & ( Nunpan.y was organ- 
ized, consisting of Mr. Munger, Clinton Markell, 
Russell C. Munger and another brother, Gil- 
bert Munger, a distinguished American artist, 
who for several years has resided in Paris, 
France. The firm built the second elevator at 
the head of Lake Superior, known as Elevator 
No. 1, and which was burned in 1880. After 
a few years Russell C. and Gilbert Munger 
withdrew, and the firm has since been Munger 
& Markell. Mr. Munger has always been 
closely connected with the grain and elevator 
business of the city. Under the joint manage- 
ment of himself and Col. C. H. Graves, the 
elevators of the Lake Superior Elevator Com- 
pany, furnishing storage for 8,000,000 bushels 
of grain, have been constructed. In 1883 the 
firm of Munger & Markell built the Grand 
Opera House in Duluth. A favorite project 
of Mr. Munger's had long been the building in 
Duluth of a large flouring mill, and his hopes 
in that direction are now realized in the Duluth 
Imperial Mill. Through his exertions on June 
:'.(>. 1888. the Imperial Mill Company was or- 
ganized and capitalized for $1,000,000, with 
R. S. Munger, president; T. A. Olmstead, vice- 
president, and B. C. Church, secretary and 
manager. In September, 1881), the mill began 
grinding, with a daily capacity of six thousand 
barrels; soon after it was increased to eight 
thousand barrels, and is now the largest mill 
in the world. Mr. Munger is also president of 
the Duluth Iron & Steel Company, which 
was organized, in 1898, with a capital of 
$1,000,000, entirely through his efforts. Its 
property consists of forty acres at West 
Duluth, having a river frontage of one thou- 



i-o 



RIOORAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



sand feet on the St. Louis river. The product 
of these mills will be used in this immediate 
vicinity, but the country tributary to Duluth 
is so immense that after this furnace is run 
ning successfully, others will be constructed 
to supply the demand. Scarcely any large 
enterprise has in recent years been undertaken 
in Duluth in which Mr. Munger has not been 
financially interested, and to the success of 
which he has not materially contributed. A 
description of some of the services he has 
rendered to the material interests of his 
adopted city were given in an editorial article 
in the issue of the Duluth News-Tribune, of 
July 11, 1896, at the time of the organization 
of the Duluth Iron & Steel Company. After 
noting that the inception of that enterprise 
was "not the initial effort of that always opti- 
mistic and resourceful pioneer to promote the 
industrial interests of this city;' the article 
proceeds to say: 



"It is Mr. Munger and Clinton Markell who 
have proved that Duluth was destined to be 
the great primary wheat shipping market of 
the country. To them belong the credit of 
bringing here the great elevators that line 
both shores of the harbor. At that time there 
was little money for investment in Duluth or 
in the country. Mr. Munger went East, and 
by the indomitable presentation of a worthy 
cause, he raised the money for the building 
here of the first elevator system. The com- 
pany complete, and the warehouses ready for 
grain, he made a long campaign out in the 
West and actually started the first movement 
of grain to Duluth. Mr. Muuger's part in the 
birth of the flour-making industry is more 
generally appreciated, but the trials he ex- 
perienced and the difficulties he overcame will 
never be fully realized, even by a people 
grateful to him for his efforts. Mr. Munger 
was the laughing stock of Minneapolis when 
he began a campaign for the building of the 
first flour mill here. He finally succeeded in 
winning over Mr. B. C. Church, president of 
the Imperial Mill Company, and his friends, 
and the direct result of his efforts is to be 
seen in the present development in the Hour- 
making industry at the head of the lakes. To 
Mr. Munger and his associates — he, chief of 
all — is due the credit of interesting lumber 
men in the manufacture of lumber at West 
Duluth, and for the building of large saw- 



mills and the development in this city of one 
of the greatest lumber markets in the eounlry. 
In the acquisition of other great industrial 
institutions. Mi. Munger has been very promi- 
nent, and in fact, to his efforts, no less than 
to those of any other man, may be ascribed the 
building of \Yest Duluth and the development 
of the commerce of the Zenith City as a whole. 
No one but a man of nerve and courage would 
at this time launch this great projeel for the 
building of a wire nail mill in Duluth." 

In 1898, by an overwhelming majority of 
the votes cast, Mr. Munger was elected Reg- 
ister of Deeds, which office he now holds. Mr. 
Munger was married at Yasselboro, Maine, in 
1858, to Miss Olive Cray. Of this marriage 
there are two daughters. Mrs. Munger died 
in 1894. Roger S. Munger has always as- 
sisted, with both his influence and his purse, 
any enterprise that would advance the pros 
perity of Duluth and the country tributary to 
the city. His record of thirty-one years as a 
resident of Duluth has caused his name to 
be known and respected throughout the 
Northwest, and he is admired for his enter- 
prise and ambition, and esteemed and hon- 
ored by all. 

Note — Among the many interesting relics of 
his mother's remote ancestors, now in the 
possession of Mr. Munger, is the will of 
Andrew Benton, "of the count ie of New 
Haven in the Colonic of Connecticut," which 
instrument is dated "!':! May 1696." Mrs. 
Munger was a direct descendant of the testa- 
tor. A copy of this document is here given, 
with the quaint and peculiar phraseology and 
orthography of the antique period when it 
was made: 

"Andrew Benton Will 
23 May 1696 
Andrew Benton of Guilford in the Countie of 
New Haven in the Colonic of Connecticut 
Being Sicke and Weake in body, but of sound 
mind and memory, Doe make this my last will 
and testament as foloweth. 

First. 1 bequeath my soul into the hands of 
Cod my loving Father in Jesus Christ my 
lord and Saviour and my body to be decently 
buried by my relations. As for the estate 
the lord hath given me, I give and bequeath as 
foloweth. 



< 




JftK (flp^^ 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



271 



First. I give my loving wife Elizebeth Ben- 
ton and to in v daughter Elezebeth Benton all 
my personal] effects viz. my cattell, horses, 
my teame and tacling belonging thereto and 
all my household goods to be devided in equal! 
proportion betwixt them excepting my arms 
and anmnilion which I give to my sons viz. 
to James Benton the gun he hath, to John 
Benton that he hath to Jabez Benton the 
musket and sword to Andrew Benton the im- 
provement of my new dwelling house and 
barne and my home lot with all the lands ad- 
joining (hereto and halfe my medow land at 
a place called sawpit lot during her Natural 
life and After her death, I give all the houseti 
barne the home lot and all the land adjoining 
as above mentioned (and half my medow land 
at sawpit lot) to my youngest sons, viz. Jabez 
Benton and Andrew Benton to be devided to 
them in equal! proportion Also I give to my 
youngest sons Jabez and Andrew Benton all 
that, parcell of land that is laid out to me 
above the falls at the East River caled com 
monly Andrew Bentons farme to be devided in 
equall proportion between them and I give to 
my son James Benton beside what I have 
formerly given him the home lot that my son 
James hath built his house on with all the 
appurtenances theireto belonging and all my 
rights of land in the east creke quarter to- 
gether with a parsell of land laid out to me 
for third devision adjoining thereto. Also I 
give to my son James the halfe of my medow 
a place called saw pit lot to be to him his heirs 
and assignes forever. 

Also. I give to my sons John Benton all my 
rights of land in the east river quarter I give 
also to my son John Benton a parsell . of 
medow land in the east side of the east river 
all my light of medow theire between Joohn- 
sons and hubbards medow to be to him and 
his heirs and assigns forever, also I give to 
my four sons all my rights of land in the 
fourth devision land to be devided to them in 
equall proportions besides each ones particu- 
lar rights as the towne hath granted, also all 
my rights in Guilford yet unlaid out to them 
and their heairs and assigns forever. 

Also. I do hereby appoint my loving wife 
Elezibeth Benton and my son James Benton 
my executors and administrators to see that 
all my debts be paid out of my personal] es- 
tate and to see that this my last will and 
testament be discharged, and ettended. 

In witnes here unto all the premises within 
wiiten I do ratifie and continue in all the par- 
ticulars theire of by setting and seall there 
unto this twentie third of may (1696) 



rand halfe my medow at saw pit lot" enter 
lined before signeing and seaeling) 

Andrew Benton, (seal). 
Signed Sealed in the presense of 
William Johnson 
Joseph Seaward 



HAMILTON M. PEYTON. 

Mr. Hamilton M. Peyton, president of the 
American Exchange Bank, of Duluth, and well 
known in commercial circles over a great por- 
tion of the Northwest, was born at Geneva, 
New York, March 17, 1835. He was the 
youngest of six children of Rowzee Peyton, 
formerly a prominent planter of Virginia. 
His ancestors on both sides were of English 
descent, and there is no older or more promi- 
nent family in Old Virginia and the South 
than the Peytons. Mr. Peyton's primary edu- 
cation was obtained in a private school, and 
by a year's attendance at an academy at South 
Williamstown, Massachusetts. Subsequently he 
passed the freshman and sophomore classes in 
Hobart College, in his native town, and finally 
was graduated from Rutgers College, New 
Brunswick, New Jersey, in the class of 1855. 
In the fall of the same year he came to Chi- 
cago, and for a short time was employed in 
a manufacturing establishment. Early in the 
spring of 1857 Mr. Peyton came to Minnesota. 
After a brief stay in Minneapolis he went to 
Hudson, Wisconsin, where he remained until 
the fall of 1S5S, when he engaged in banking 
and lumber manufacturing in Superior. In 
the summer of 1*74 he removed to Duluth, but 
continued the lumber manufacturing business 
at Superior. He has been a manufacturer of 
lumber for forty years, and is now head of the 
Arm of Peyton, Kimball & Barber, whose mills 
are at Superior, Wisconsin, and has other ex- 
tensive lumber interests in both Wisconsin 
and Minnesota. In 1880 he was one of the 
organizers of the American Exchange Bank 
at Duluth, and has been the president of that 
institution from the first, covering a period 
of practically twenty years. He has been 
twice married. There were no children of the 
first wife, who died in 18(i2. Subsequently he 



272 



BIOGRAPHY <>F MINNESOTA. 



nun ricd Martha Newton, of Superior, and of 
lliis marriage were born ten children, eighi of 
whom are now living. The family are com- 
municants of St. Paul's (Episcopal) church, 
of which Mr. Peyton lias been a member and 
served as a vestryman for many years. In 
politics Mr. Peyton is and always has been 
conservative and hardly partisan, lie has 
generally voted with the Democrats, but by 
reason of the financial policy adopted by thai 
party in recenl years, he has acted with the 
Republicans. One who is familial- with the 
character and career of .Mr. Peyton, says of 
him: 

".Mr. Peyton is well and favorably known as 
a conscientious and upright citizen, possessing 
sound judgment, and has been a student of 
finance for many years. His capacity ami 
efficiency were shown all through the financial 
banking crisis that occurred a few years ago. 
In his manner of living he is plain and simple, 
void of ostentation. He has never courted 
public admiration or notoriety, yet withal, it 
has been a pleasure to bestow his charities 
where he thought they properly belonged. He 
has always been greatly interested in the 
growth and progression of his adopted city 
and State, and has done his share in giving 
encouragement to enterprises that contributed 
much to the benefit of the third largest city 
of the State." 



JOHN 1). BRADY, 



John Donald Brady, Surveyor General of 
Logs and Lumber, of Duluth, Minnesota, is of 
Canadian parentage. His father, Donald 
Brady, first took up his permanent residence 
in the United States in 1867, locating in 
LeSueur county, Minnesota. Here he was for 
a number id' years engaged in the business of 
farming. In IS!):: he settled in Duluth. where 
he at present resides. His son, John D., of 
whom this sketch is written, is a native of the 
State of Michigan, born at Port Huron, July 
:_'::. 1858. He attended the public schools of 
the locality in which his boyhood days were 
passed, acquiring a fair common school edu- 
cation. Ambitious to launch out for himself 
in life, he at an early age took his place in 



the busy ranks of the greal industrial army, 
and during his career has been engaged in 
various lines of business, gaining from each 
an increment of practical experience which 
helped to qualify him for the duties of his 
present responsible post. During fourteen of 
the earlier years he was occupied as traveling 
salesman, operating from the commercial cen- 
ters of Chicago, St. Paul, Cincinnati and other 
of our leading Western cities. In 1897 he was 
appointed to the position of railway mail clerk, 
his route lying between St. Paul, Minnesota, 
and Watertown, South Dakota. He located in 
Duluth in the year 1893, where he followed 
mercantile pursuits until his appointment by 
Gov. John Lind as Surveyor General of Loys 
and Lumber for the district of Duluth. the 
affairs of which office he is administering with 
unquestioned efficiency. On June -7, 1888, 
.Mr. Brady was married to Miss Katherine Con 
nelly, a daughter of Patrick Connelly, of 
Watertown, South Dakota. No children have 
resulted from their union. Mr. and Mrs. Brady 
are adherents to the doctrines of the Catholic 
church. In politics Mr. Brady has always been 
a loyal Democrat, keenly alive to the interests 
of his party, and as such is well known and 
appreciated, not only in Duluth, but at Minne- 
apolis and St. Paul, and, indeed, throughout 
the State. He is a man of a kindly and oblig- 
ing nature, and is blessed with the gratifying 
consciousness id' the fidelity of many warm 
persona] friends. 



LUTHER MENDENHALL. 

One of the best-known characters in North- 
western financial interests is Luther Menden- 
hall, now president of the Duluth City 
Railway Company, and late president of the 
First National Bank of Duluth. Coining to 
the city in ls<>s. when it had nothing of great 
ness but a promise, he has witnessed its won 
del ful development, and no man knows its 
history better or is better acquainted with 
Northwestern affairs and conditions. Mr. 
Mendenhall is descended from an old Quaker 
familv, and was born in Chester county, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



'-73 



Pennsylvania, August 7, 1836, the son of a 
farmer named Isaac Mendenhall (who died in 
1881), and one of a family of five children. 
His early education was acquired in the com- 
mon schools and at an academy at Nbrristown, 
Pennsylvania. In 1857 he entered the Univer- 
sity of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, and after a 
I luce years' classical course, graduated from 
that institution in 1860. For a year thereafter 
he was a law student in the office of Hon. 
Wayne McVeagh, Attorney General, in 1881, 
under President Garfield. In 1801, the first 
year of the war of the Rebellion, he enlisted 
as a private soldier in Company A, First Regi- 
ment. Pennsylvania Reserves. On account of 
his peculiar fitness for the work, he was de- 
tailed on special service in the ordnance de- 
partment of the army, and was kepi in this 
service the greater part of his term, although 
he was with his regiment in the second battle 
of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Antietam, Get- 
tysburg, and other important engagements. 
He was mustered out in 1864, and again began 
the study of law, this time in the office of 
another distinguished attorney, who became 
a cabinet official — Hon. Benjamin H. Brewster, 
of Philadelphia, who, under President Arthur, 
succeeded Wayne McVeagh — Mr. Menden- 
hall's first legal preceptor — as Attorney Gen- 
eral of the United Slates. In 1868 Mr. 
Mendenhall came to Duluth and engaged in 
the real estate business, which he has con- 
ducted and operated extensively until the 
present time. In 1882 he assisted in organiz- 
ing the Duluth National Bank, was elected its 
president, and held that position in the bank 
until its consolidation with the Union 
National and the Merchants' National and 
afterwards, in 1889, in the consolidation 
of the First National, of which institution he 
was chosen president the same year, officiat- 
ing until 1897. In 1892 he was elected presi- 
dent of the City Railway Company, which 
position he still holds. Mr. Mendenhall has 
never been an aspirant for public office, nor 
has he sought notoriety of any kind. In early 
days he was a village councilman of Duluth. 
and in 1891 became connected with the Park 
Commission of the city, and has ever since 



been president of the board. These are all 
the official positions lie has ever held. He 
seems well satisfied to be considered a good 
business man with an honorable record, a sol 
dier who rendered faithful service, a citizen 
loyal to his city, State and country, and a 
man of worth and integrity. 



HANSEN SMITH. 



The birthplace of Hansen Smith was in the 
Duchy of Schleswig, formerly Danish terri- 
tory, but now a province of the German 
Confederation. The date of his birth was De- 
cember 6, 1867. Early in the year 1870, his 
parents came with him to this country, and 
were for a term of years located in Manistee, 
Michigan. They then removed to California 
■ iiid settled in thai State, Hansen, however, 
remaining in Michigan. His circumstances 
were such that he found it necessary to be- 
come self-supporting at the age of ten years, 
and his opportunities for obtaining an educa- 
tion were consequently limited to short win- 
ter terms of school. As he grew older he 
conceived a strong desire to better acquaint 
himself with America by means of travel, and 
this desire, together with a natural inclination 
for the sea faring life, led him, when about 
seventeen, to spend a season on the Great 
Lakes. The following winter he passed at 
Grand Rapids, his time there being profitably 
employed in taking a course of instruction at 
Swensberg's Business College of that city. In 
the spring he went East and shipped out of 
New York harbor on a sailing vessel bound for 
South America. Entering the Gulf, this ship 
put into port at Galveston, Texas, and young 
Smith left it at that point; but he soon after- 
ward embarked upon another vessel, and 
continued to follow the sea for the most of 
the time until he was twenty years of age. He 
left his last ship at San Francisco, and re- 
turned overland to Michigan. The business 
training he had obtained at Grand Rapids now 
came into practical use. He secured employ- 
ment in a general office capacity, and during 
the next four years was occupied in work of a 



-74 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



clerical nature. This experience in subor- 
dinate positions opened the way to responsible 
ones, and lie early attained to a secure footing 
in the business world. In the spring of 18!)2 
he again yielded to his love of travel, making 
an extensive tour of the Puget Sound country. 
Upon the completion of this trip, he located 
in Duluth, where lie has since made his home. 
In 1895 Mr. Smith established the financial 
firm of H. E. Smith & Company, and as out- 
growths of the business of this firm, two bank 
ing houses were subsequently organized — The 
West Duluth Bank, in 1896, and tin- Mer- 
chants' Bank of Duluth, in February, lS'lS. 
Mr. Smith is president of both these institu- 
tions. The firm of H. E. Smith & Company has 
lately been succeeded by the Northern Secur- 
ity Company, of which Mr. Smith is president. 
It is extensively engaged in looking after the 
property and investments of its associates and 
of other concerns. Apart from the affairs of 
his own special establishments, Mr. Smith has 
weighty interests in many corporations and 
enterprises. He was formerly president of the 
Duluth Chamber of Commerce and the West 
Duluth Business Men's Association. He was 
a member of the Charter Commission of 1897; 
is also a member of the present commission, 
and is now serving his second term as a mem- 
ber of the board of Water and Light Commis- 
sioners. Mr. Smith is a member of the Kitchi 
Gamnii Club. In National politics he has 
always been Republican. On October 8, 1891, 
Mr. Smith was married to Miss Mary Cecilia 
Wilson, of a Vermont family. Four children 
have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Smith — Hazel 
Marguerite, Mildred Etheleen, Ruth Winno- 
gene, and Inez Lucille. 



CHARLES H. GRAVES. 

A citizen of Duluth for well-nigh the past 
thirty years, and one who has taken a promi- 
nent part in the phenomenal development of 
the city — a brave soldier who served his coun- 
try for many years and attained distinction by 
his conduct on the battlefield — a man of 
eminent record in the public affairs of his 



adopted State — a hard working business man 
of large influence in the commercial affairs of 
tin' Northwest — and a gentleman in every 
sense — this is a brief characterization of Col. 
Charles Hinman Graves. He was bom at 
Springfield, Massachusetts, August 14, 1839. 
His father, Rev. H. A. Craves, was a noted 
Baptist minister, and at one period was the 
editor of a denominational journal of that 
religious persuasion, called the "Christian 
Watchman and Reflector," published at Bos- 
ton. The maiden name of his mother was 
.Mary Hinman, and she was a daughter of 
Scoville Hinman of New Haven, Connecticut. 
On both sides of his family he is descended 
from very old New England stock. His 
paternal ancestors, the Graves, came from 
England to America in 1645. and Royal Hin- 
man, from whom his mother descended, was 
an early Colonial Governor of Connecticut. 
Colonel Graves has a military record of which 
he ought to be very proud. In July, 1861, 
when the war of the Rebellion was fairly be- 
ginning, he enlisted as a private soldier in the 
Fortieth New York Volunteers. Subsequently 
and successively he became corporal, sergeant, 
second lieutenant, first lieutenant and captain 
in that regiment. Then he was made captain 
and assistant adjutant general, major and 
assistant adjutant general, lieutenant colonel 
and colonel in the volunteer service. Entering 
the regular army, he became in succession, 
first lieutenant, captain, brevet major, and 
lieutenant colonel, and by detail and assign- 
ment was inspector general of the department 
of Dakota. During the war of the Rebellion 
he participated in nearly all of the battles in 
which the army of the Potomac and the army 
of the James were engaged, and was also in 
two important engagements in the North Caro- 
lina campaign of 18G5. To particularize, he 
was in the battles of first Bull Run, Williams- 
burg, Fair Oaks, Malvern Hill, Fredericks- 
burg, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, Mine 
Run, second Bull Run, Chantilly, Gettysburg. 
Deep Bottom. Petersburg, Fort Fisher and 
Wilmington, not enumerating a number of 
skirmishes. At Gettysburg he was severely 
wounded, and for gallantry in the assault on 



BIOGRAPHY ill' 1 MINNESOTA. 



-V5 



Fort Fisher, North Carolina, he was promoted 
to the rank of major and assistant adjutant 
general. His service in the regular army was 
of honor and credit, as is shown by the record 
of his rapid promotions in the comparatively 
short period of Ins connection therewith. In 
1870 Colonel Graves resigned his cpmmission 
in the army, and soon thereafter engaged in 
the real estate and insurance business in 
Duluth, which city lias since been his home. 
He wrote the tirst fire insurance policy ever 
drawn up in Duluth. Subsequently he became 
prominent in the development of the material 
interests of the city in many different ways. 
He was in the wholesale salt and lime trade, 
then engaged in the extensive operation of 
grain elevators, inaugurating the grain busi- 
ness of Duluth by large purchases and ship- 
ments in 1871. lie has been a director in the 
St. Paul & Duluth Railroad, an officer in the 
Duluth Iron Company i which company made 
the first pig iron ever cast in Minnesota), was 
the first subscriber to and a member of the 
first board of directors of St. Luke's Hospital. 
In 1893 he returned to his original business of 
real estate and insurance, and is now president 
of the Graves-Manley Insurance Agency. 
Colonel Graves has performed his full share 
of the public service. He was elected and 
served for two terms as mayor of Duluth. and 
made a first-class executive. In 1872 he was 
elected to the State Senate from a district 
which at the time comprised all of Northeast- 
ern Minnesota, and which was composed of 
nine counties, and was three hundred miles 
long by one hundred miles wide. He was 
prominent and influential in the passage of 
the law creating the first railroad commission, 
and led the movement which reformed the 
State Treasury management in 1876, and his 
services in the sessions of 1 S7M-74-7r>-7<> were 
conspicuous and valuable. In 1SSS lie was 
elected State Representative. Upon the or- 
ganization of the Legislature, in January, 
1889, he was chosen Speaker of the House. He 
used the authority and influence of his posi- 
tion always for wise and wholesome legisla 
tion, ami kept the work and business of the 
House over which he presided always well in 



hand. His record as Speaker added largely to 
his general reputation as a publicist, and re- 
ceived the approval of all political parties and 
classes. He lias always been a Republican, 
and since he left the army has been somewhat 
active in politics and prominent in the coun- 
cils and affairs of his party. In 1888 he was 
a delegate-at-large from Minnesota to the 
National Republican Convention at Chicago, 
when Harrison was first nominated, and is 
nearly always a delegate in State and district 
conventions. Frequently, too, he has taken 
part as a representative of Duluth in commer- 
cial conventions, and in the movements for the 
establishment of deep water ways from Duluth 
to the sea coast — which have resulted in such 
incalculable benefit to the Northwest — he took 
an active part. He has also been prominent 
in certain civic organizations — is past com- 
mander of Willis A. Gorman post, G. A. R., of 
Duluth; past senior vice-commander of the 
.Minnesota connnandery of the Loyal Legion; 
is a member of the Army and Navy Club of 
Washington, D. «'.; of the Minnesota Club of 
St. Paul, and is ex-president of the Kitchi- 
Gammi (.'lull of Duluth. Colonel Graves was 
married in 1873 to Miss E. Grace Totten, a 
daughter of the distinguished and accom- 
plished soldier, the late .Major General J. G. 
Totten. formerly chief of engineers of the 
United States army. Thev have no children. 



EDWARD S. KEMPTON. 

Edward S. Kempton, of Duluth, treasurer 
of the Duluth, Mesaba & Northern Railway 
Company, was born at Willburton, England. 
November 27, 1848. He is, too, of English 
parentage and lineage, but an American bred, 
and of Northwestern training. He came to 
the United Stales when a mere lad. His early 
education was received in the public schools 
of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and he began life 
without any of the advantages of wealth or 
position. Whatever of success he has attained 
in life has been achieved by his individual ex- 
ertions. His competency and efficiency were 
manifested very early in life, and he success- 



-/ 



6 



UlodKAI'llY OF MINNESOTA. 



fully conducted a large mercantile business 
in Illinois before he was twenty years of age. 
He entered the railway service, in lN74,as clerk 
and ticket accountant of the Milwaukee. Lake 
Shore & Western Railway. In 1877 he be- 
came clerk of freight accounts. From L884 
to 1SSS he was traveling auditor, and from 
1888 to September, 1893, was chief clerk of 
the auditor's office. He then left the Milwau- 
kee, Lake Shore & Western, and from Sep- 
tember, is 1 .):;, to .May, 1895, was chief clerk of 
i lie treasurer's office of the Duluth, Mesaba 
& Northern. In May. 1895, he was acting 
treasurer, and in February, 1896, was made 
treasurer. Ins present position. The gradual 
and successive promotions which Mr. Kemp- 
ton has received, evidence close and method- 
ical attention to the details of business. 
fidelity to duly, and a general efficiency in his 
profession. There is no royal road to prefer- 
ment in positions devoted to railway manage- 
ment. Competency and capability are the 
tests, and must be demonstrated before an 
executive officer is entrusted with any respon- 
sibility. In politics he is a Republican, and 
endorses President McKinley's administration. 
Mr. Kempton was married at Lombard, Illi- 
nois, June 14, 1868, to Miss Susan Mink, a 
daughter of Reuben Mink, a respectable Illi- 
nois farmer. Four children, all of whom are 
living, were born of this marriage. Mrs. 
KemptOn, an estimable and worthy lady, re- 
spected and beloved by every one, a fond wife 
and an affectionate mother, departed this life 
April 17, 1899. 



PATRICK II. KELLY. 

Patrick II. Kelly was born in the County of 
Mayo, Ireland. February 2. 1831. He re- 
ceived his early education in his native land, 
and when sixteen years of age came with his 
parents to America, locating first near Mon- 
treal, Canada, where they remained only four 
months. They then removed to the United 
Slates and settled in Plattsburg, New York. 
The family consisted of five children, all sons, 
of which Patrick was the third in older of 



birth. In 1857, Patrick and his younger 
brother, Anthony, came to the Northwest and 
finally settled in Minneapolis, where they en- 
gaged in the retail grocery business for sev- 
eral years. In 1863, Patrick came to St. Paul 
and formed a partnership with Mr. Beaupre, 
under the firm name of Beaupre & Kelly, in 
the wholesale grocery business. In 1874, Mr. 
Kelly purchased his partner's interest in the 
firm and became the sole owner. The busi- 
ness had grown to enormous proportions 
under Mr. Kelly's able and aggressive man 
agement. He then organized the new firm of 
I'. II. Kelly & Company, taking into partner- 
ship Messrs. A. Dufresne and .lames (). Gor- 
man, and later Mr. E. W. Johnson. In ls7. r > 
they erected the tine structure at the corner 
of Third and. Sibley streets, which, although 
destroyed by tire in 1880, was immediately 
rebuilt and has ever since been the home of 
the firm. In 1883, another change was made 
by the incorporation of the P. H. Kelly Mer- 
cantile Company, with Mr. Kelly as presi- 
dent. The next and last change was the 
formation of Foley Brothers & Kelly Mer- 
cantile Company, which was incorporated in 
December, 1896, with Timothy Foley as presi- 
dent, I'. II. Kelly vice-president and general 
manager, M. II. Foley secretary and treasurer. 
and John F. Kelly assistant general manager. 
The Messrs. Foley have not been personally 
active in the business, and Mr. P. II. Kelly 
remains, as he has been for thirty-six years, 
the active head of the establishment. In this 
work he is ably assisted by John F. Kelly, who 
has been with the house twenty-three years. 
Mr. Kelly has always been a Democrat in 
politics, but was not an active politician until 
1SS4. when the Democratic convention met in 
Si. Paul. He was an ardent supporter of Mr. 
Cleveland for the Presidency, and was a mem- 
ber of the Democratic National Committee — 
Mi-. Doran being chairman of the State Com- 
mittee. After the election of Mr. Cleveland, 
the Democratic Slate Committee met and 
formally voted that all matters relating to 
patronage of the administration, for the State, 
should be left with these two men. Thai gave 
Mr. Kelly greai prominence throughout the 





/*,' £*>£&/ //fr* 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



'■77 



State in tlic political affairs of the Democracy. 
He discharged his duties for the best interests 
of his party, and gave general satisfaction. 
In 1802 Mr. Kelly was elected to the House of 
Representatives of the State Legislature, and 
was reelected in 1N!I4. He was very active 
and largely instrumental in procuring the 
passage of the bill for locating the new 
State capitol in St. Paul. No other man was 
so much relied upon by the people, to see that 
the bill was put through, and this he ac- 
complished, lie also took an active part in 
securing the permanent location of the State 
Fair in St. Paul, in securing the ground from 
the county, and the appropriations from the 
State for the buildings. Mr. Kelly has always 
been prominently active in all affairs pertain- 
ing to the welfare of St. Paul, in securing 
appropriations and subscriptions to public 
enterprises, and also as a leader and organizer 
of political forces. His success as a business 
man has been achieved by his own exertions, 
solely as a result of his great intellectual 
abilities and his natural energy of character. 
He is public spirited, and in the conduct of 
his large business affairs he is eminently 
sagacious and prudent, and in the discharge of 
every obligation and duty he has ever been 
loyal and faithful. To him the eity of St. Paul 
and the Stale of Minnesota are largely in- 
debted for much faithful service, and he stands 
high in the confidence and good opinion of 
the citizens of St. Paul, and in the esteem of 
the public generally. Mr. Kelly is a man who 
has lived well and has enjoyed living. He 
has traveled extensively and made good use 
of his opportunities. He was at one time a 
director of the First National Bank of St. Paul. 
of the Chatham National Bank of New York, 
and of the Sf. Paul Trust Company, and he is 
at present a director in the St. Paul Title 
and Trust Company, lie was one of the or- 
ganizers of the Commercial Bank of Sf. Paul 
and was its vice-president. He was also a 
director of the Minnesota Iron Company. He 
is a member of the Catholic church. Mr. Kelly 
was married September 10. 1861, to Mary A. E. 
Morley, who died January 29, 1899. She was 
a daughter of Michael and Mary C. Morley, of 



Montreal, Canada. Her father still survives 
at the wonderful old age of 107 years. Mr. 
and Mrs. Kelly were the parents of six chil- 
dren — two sons and four daughters. Only the 
daughters are living: Mrs. E. W. Tingle, of 
Philadelphia; Mrs. .1. B. Meagher, of Mankato, 
Minnesota; Catherine and Esther, living at 
home. 



JEREMIAH C. DONAHOWER. 

Jeremiah Chester Donahower has been a 
Minnesotan since he was eighteen years of age, 
or for practically forty-five years. He has been 
well known as a business man, a soldier, a 
United States official, and he has contributed 
his full share to the early history of the State, 
and has, besides, sustained his character of 
good citizenship generally. He comes of good 
(dd Pennsylvania-German stock, and was born 
in the Keystone State, near Reading, Berks 
county, January 27, 1837. The Donahower 
faniil\ came from Germany and settled in 
Chester county, Pennsylvania, near "the 
Forge," in 1732. During the War of the Revo 
lution. and in the winter of 1777-78, the Cap 
tain's grandfather. John Donahower, and 
his great-grandfather, Jacob Donahower, fur- 
nished two four-horse teams lone of which 
John Donahower drove himself), which were 
engaged in hauling supplies to Washington's 
destitute army at Valley Forge. The father of 
our subject. Captain Jacob Donahower, served 
in the War of 1X12. and was subsequently a 
captain of a troop of cavalry in the Pennsyl- 
vania militia. His wife, the mother of our sub- 
ject, was Catherine Fritz, of Montgomery coun- 
ty. Pennsylvania, and she also belonged to a 
prominent Pennsylvania-German family. Cap- 
tain Donahower was educated in the public 
schools of Lebanon and Reading, Pennsyl- 
vania, and in a select school at Beverly, New 
Jersey. He left school and began teaching at 
the age of eighteen. But the same year he de- 
cided to come to St. Paul and join his brother. 
Frederic A. Donahower, then in the banking 
house of MacKubin & Edgerton, but now, and 
for many years past, a prominent citizen and 
banker of St. Peter, Minnesota. May 10, 185.", 



> 7 8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



the Captain landed in St. Paul. For a consid- 
erable time lie was in the employ of the firm 
of John R. and B. F. Irvine. In 1860 he made 
a trip through Kansas and Missouri, and on his 
return to Minnesota — in November of that 
vear — was chosen teller of the banking house 
of Edgerton & Donahower at St. Peter. When 
the War of the Rebellion broke out, Captain 
Donahower was living in St. Peter. Soon 
after Sumter was tired upon, he assisted 
in recruiting and organizing a company 
of volunteer, which became Company E, 
Second Minnesota Infantry. He was elected 
second lieutenant of the company, June 
17, 1861, at Fort Ridgely, and was mus- 
tered into the service July 5. The regi- 
ment was brought together at Fort Snell- 
ing late in September, Company E, during the 
months of July, August and September, being 
employed in frontier duty at Yellow Medicine 
and at the lower agency, with headquarters 
at Fort Ridgely, where Lieutenant Donahower 
was post adjutant. Tn August he led a squad 
of twelve men to Big Stone lake and recovered 
a number of horses from a large band of 
marauding Sisseton Sioux Indians, who had 
just returned from a raid on the settlement 
near Yankton, on the Missouri. In October, 
1861, he went with his regiment to Kentucky, 
and was in the battle fought by General 
Thomas at Mill Springs, Kentucky, January 
1!>, 1862 — the first Union victory of the war — 
which freed the central and eastern portions 
of Kentucky from the Rebel forces, and con 
tributed to the successful operations against 
Fort Donelson and the later occupation of 
Nashville by General Buell. Tn February, 1862, 
lie was ordered on detached duty with the 
United States signal corps, but after his pro- 
motion to the captaincy of his company, in 
May, 1862, he returned to the regiment at 
Corinth, Mississippi, and was with it there- 
after until his resignation, in August, 1864. 
Captain Donahower was in command of his 
company through the siege of Corinth, and on 
the long and arduous pursuit of General 
liragg's army through the mountains of Ten- 
nessee and the State of Kentucky, which cul- 
minated October is. 1862, in the battle of Per 



ryville, Kentucky. He was present with his 
regiment in the march toward Tullahoma, 
starting from Triune, Tennessee, June 23, 1863, 
participating in the skirmishes and the ardu- 
ous work of that campaign. In August, 1863, 
the Second Minnesota Volunteers were with 
Rosecrans when lie started from Winchester, 
Tennessee, crossing the mountains in three 
widely separated columns in his strategic 
movement to compel General Bragg to evac- 
uate Chattanooga, which finally resulted in 
the memorable battle foughl on the banks of 
the Chickamauga. in Georgia, September 1!) 
and 20, 1863, where the Second Minnesota lost 
forty-two per cent of its men present on the 
field. In November following he was with the 
regiment at Missionary Ridge when it charged 
across the plain in front and captured the line 
of earthworks at the foot of the ridge and at 
last the high crest beyond, and where the Sec- 
ond Minnesota lost twenty per cent of its mem- 
bers in as many minutes. On Sherman's At- 
lanta campaign, he participated in what Gen- 
eral Sherman called a "continuous battle," 
commencing May 6, and including Buzzard's 
Koost. Etesaca, Kulp's Farm, and other minor 
engagements, terminal ing in the battles around 
Kenesaw Mountain, in the latter part of June, 
1SC>4. He was then under orders from (Jen. 
George II. Thomas, placed on detached service 
at Chattanooga, to prepare the rolls for the 
mustering out of enlisted men whose terms 
would expire during the months of July and 
August. 1864. During his term he received 
special mention in orders, and made an en- 
viable record generally. Early in August, 1X(>4. 
his resignation having been accepted, Captain 
Donahower returned North, reaching Minne- 
sota in November, and resumed his former po- 
sition as teller in the banking house of Edger- 
ton & Donahower, at St. Peter, Minnesota. He 
was engaged in the dry goods trade in St. 
Peter from 1866 until the fall of 1869, and in 
1871, at its organization, he became the assist- 
ant cashier of the First National Bank of that 
city. In 1888, seventeen years later, he was 
elected cashier. In May, ISitO, he was appointed 
United States marshal for the Federal District 
of Minnesota, and served four years. When he 




The C&nluru Pubtisfuttg & Enurxivmy Co Chi&vpo- 




v. • 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



279 



resigned us cashier of the bank at. St. Peter, 
the board of directors, by formal resolution, 
bore testimony, "to the courtesy, ability, and 
fidelity with which lie had discharged the du- 
ties of assistant cashier and cashier, during 
his nineteen years' service with the bank." 
This commendation was accompanied by an 
elegant silver service. Senator Davis said with 
reference to the Captain's appointment: "Cap- 
tain Donahower was a distinguished soldier 
and had testimonials as to his character and 
competency, the like of which have never be 
fore passed under my hands, in regard to any 
candidate for office." Since Captain Dona- 
hower left the United States marshal's office, 
lie has not been actively engaged in any 
business. He has never lost his interest 
in military matters. In 1883 he was com- 
missioned captain of Company I, Second 
Regiment of the Minnesota National Guard, 
and in April, 1887, he was commissioned lieu- 
tenant colonel of the Third Regiment, M. N. 
G., serving three years, when he resigned to 
become United States marshal. He is a mem 
her of the Grand Army of the Republic, and a 
Companion of the Minnesota Oommandery of 
the Military Order of the Loyal Legion. He 
is the author of an admirable paper on the 
battle of Lookout Mountain and Missionary 
Ridge, which was read before the Loyal Legion 
in December, 1898, and received many compli- 
ments from those who heard it. Captain Don- 
ahower is highly esteemed and admired by flic 
Union veterans of the War of the Rebellion, 
and is also very popular as a private citizen, 
and has a host of friends in the community 
where he has resided, and is well and favorably 
known throughout the State. He was married, 
August 15, 1865, to Miss Emma R. Veitb. of 
Galesburg, Illinois, a native of Quincy, in that 
State. They have one child, a daughter, living 
at home. 



MARK I). FLOWER. 



Gen. Mark Deloss Flower was born at 
Chagrin Falls. Cuyahoga county, Ohio, March 
31, 1S42. on what is known as the "Western 
Reserve." His father, Marcus T. C. Flower, 



came to Minnesota in the Territorial period of 
1855, settling at Meriden, Steele county. He 
was the first settler in that town, and his near 
est neighbor was at Owatonna, twelve miles 
distant. He is in comfortable circumstances, 
and now lives a retired life in St. Paul, at the 
advanced age of eighty-five. M. T. G. Flower's 
ancestors settled in Massachusetts in 1635. 
His grandfather, Ozias Flower, served with 
credit in the War of the Revolution. A very 
similar ancestral record is that of Gybele 
Brooks, General Flower's mother. Her grand- 
father, Hannaniah Brooks, served three years 
in the Continental army, during the struggle 
for American independence, and her father, 
Gol. John Brooks, of Ohio, served with dis- 
tinction in the War of 1812. Mark D. Flower 
came to Minnesota with his parents in 1855, 
when he was thirteen years of age, and is 
therefore one of the earliest settlers in the 
State. In 1S57, he Mas sent to the Aurora 
Institute, at Aurora, Illinois. Tt was an acad- 
emy of high standing in those days, and he 
remained there until the 13th of April, 1861, 
the day Fort Sumter was fired upon. He would 
have graduated in June of that year, but the 
feeling of patriotism and the sense of duty 
were too strong within for him to remain in- 
active. On April 14, the day following the 
beginning of hostilities, he enlisted in Com- 
pany G, Seventh Illinois Volunteer Infantry, 
I he first regiment raised in Illinois for the War 
of the Rebellion. When his term of enlistment 
in the Seventh expired, he re-enlisted for three 
years in the Thirty-sixth Illinois Volunteer In- 
fantry. He served in many of the important 
campaigns in Missouri. Kentucky. Tennessee, 
Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. In De- 
cember, 1863, General Sherman organized the 
First Brigade of Memphis (Tennessee) Enrolled 
Militia, consisting of four regiments of infan- 
try, a company of cavalry and one battery- of 
artillery. This force was enrolled largely from 
employes of the quartermaster, commissary 
and other departments of the Government sta- 
tioned there, supplemented by citizens of Mem- 
phis, who were liable to military service — that 
city being under semi-martial law. Of this 
force, General Sherman appointed Mr. Flower 



28o 



BIOGEAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Adjutant-General, with the rank of captain in 
said organization. The brigade was well or- 
ganized and equipped and was very efficient 
in supporting the regular forces of the Govern- 
ment. In repelling the raid of General Forrest, 
il rendered signal service, which was acknowl- 
edged, in special orders, by General Sherman. 
In July, 18(i. r >, General Flower retired from the 
army, having served continuously, save, for a 
brief period between enlistments, from April 
14, 1801. His interest in political matters was 
first manifested, when, as a child, he attended 
the fervid and inspiring campaign meetings of 
Joshua R. Giddings and Thomas Gorwin in 
Ohio. He has always been a staunch Repub- 
lican, and cast his first vote for Lincoln, while 
in the army. In Minnesota he has been the 
warm personal friend, confidant and ally of 
William Windom, Horace Austin, C. K. Davis, 
A. R. McGill and Henry A. Castle and others, 
and has always fought their battles with cour- 
age, honor and ability. His career as a poli- 
tician has been honorable and trustworthy; 
his position on every political question has 
been frank, courageous and manly, and he 
ranks among the ablest political leaders of the 
State. In March. 1870. he was appointed Ad- 
jutant-General, by Governor Austin, to suc- 
ceed Gen. II. 1'. Van Clove. He served until 
November, 1ST."), when he resigned to engage 
in the grain and transportation business, lie 
became the owner of a steamboat and fleet of 
barges, which he operated on the Mississippi 
and tributary streams until 1877, when all his 
boat property wms destroyed in a cyclone on 
the Yellowstone river, where he was engaged 
on a Government transportation contract. 
Though he was then quite young, lie had ac- 
cumulated about $40,00(1 by his own exertions. 
As the Yellowstone country was at that time 
involved in war with Silting liull, no insur 
ance could be had, and the whole hiss fell 
Upon the General, leaving him a financial 
wreck, and returning to St. Paul, he began 
life anew. In 1878 he was elected chief clerk 
of the House of Representatives, and in 1870 
he was appointed deputy collector of customs 
for the port of St. Paul — which position he 
filled with credit and ability. He was removed 



by President Cleveland, "lor offensive parti- 
sanship" (which the General considered no 
dishonor), and reappointed by President Har- 
rison as soon as he resumed the reins of gov- 
ernment. In 1886, President A. It. Stickney 
made General Flower the general claim agent 
of the Chicago, Great Western Railway Com 
pany. lie continued in that position until 
L890, at which time he was elected president 
and manager of the St. Paul Union Stockyards 
Company, which position he still holds. He 
is a member of the Commercial Club of St. 
Paul, a director in the St. Paul Chamber of 
Commerce, secretary and general manager of 
the South St. Paul Belt Railroad Company, a 
director and member of the executive com 
mittee of the Interstate Investment Trust, and 
a director of the United States Savings & Loan 
Company. He is president of the Great West- 
ern Fertilizer and Manufacturing Company, 
and vice-president of the Union Stock Yards 
I Sank. J. J. McCardy, city comptroller, says: 

"I have known General Flower intimately 
for nearly thirty years. He was the first man 
with whom I formed an intimate friendship 
upon my arrival in St. Paul, a stranger from 
the State of Kentucky. One peculiarity of this 
friendship is. that it has continued to grow 
stronger from that day to this. General 
Flower and myself are two of a quartet (the 
others, Capt. Henry A. Castle, now of 'Wash 
inglon, I). C, and Col. H. G. Hicks, of 
.Minneapolis), who have for twenty-one con- 
secutive years eaten our Thanksgiving dinners 
together, without a member of the quartet 
being absent. General Flower is a high- 
minded, chivalrous gentleman, and the very 
sold of honor. As one man has tersely put it: 
"Mark Flower is pure gold.' nis success in 
business and politics may be attributed to his 
dogged persistence. He is a fighter who never 
knows when he is whipped; pugnacious as a 
bull-dog when aroused, but in daily intercourse 
one of the most genial and companionable of 
men." 

Capt. Henry A. Castle. Auditor of the 
Post Office Department, Washington, I>. C, in 

a recent interview, said to the writer: 

"Gen. Mark I>. Flower combines, in a 
remarkable degree, the qualities which make 



P.IOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



281 



a successful business man and a popular pub- 
lic character. In all the numerous official 
positions which he has held, his administration 
has been marked by intelligence, energy, in- 
tegrity and a conscientious devotion to the 
interests of State and National governments. 
He has known how to discharge every duty 
fearlessly and at the same time treat every- 
body who had official relations with him so 
courteously as to make an abiding and favor- 
able impression. His business career has been 
marked by similar qualities. In different lines 
of enterprise he has achieved successes which 
usually come only to persons who have given 
life-long attention to a single one of them. His 
activity as a Republican has always been ex- 
erted unselfishly and most influentially in 
behalf of friends whom he deemed worthy of 
promotion. There has scarcely been a State 
campaign in Minnesota for thirty years in 
which General Flower has not been active in 
effort and potential in controlling results. No 
one ever accused him of deserting a friend or 
sacrificing a principle." 

While stationed at Memphis, Tennessee, in 
October, 1864, General Flower married Miss 
Lena Gutherz, daughter of Henry Gutherz, and 
a sister of Gar! Gutherz, the noted artist. She 
is an accomplished and most estimable lady, 
whose interesting personality brightens the 
General's beautiful home. They have one 
daughter, Grace, the wife of Mr. John T. Oon- 
ley, of St. Paul. Mr. Conley is assistant 
general passenger agent for the Ghicago, Mil- 
waukee & St. Paul Railroad Company, a man 
of fine character and marked business ability. 



ROBERT 0. DUNN. 



Robert C. Dunn, State Auditor of Minnesota, 
was born in County Tyrone. Ireland, February 
14, 1855. He came to America in April, 1S70; 
resided with an uncle in Columbia county, 
Wisconsin, for a year; went to St. Louis, Mis- 
souri, early in 1871, and learned the printer's 
trade in that city; settled in Minnesota, in 1876, 
and established the Princeton Union, at Prince- 
ton, Mille Lacs county, the same year. He 
was married to Lydia McKenzie, of Spencer 
P>rook, Isanti county, in 1887. He still con- 
tinues to publish the Princeton Union, one of 
I he best weekly papers in the State. Mr. Dunn 



held the office of town clerk of Princeton from 
1878 to 1880. He was elected, on the Repub- 
lican ticket, county attorney of Mille Lacs 
county, which position he held from 1884 to 
1888. His party elected him a member of the 
Legislature in 1888. He was renominated in 
L890, and it is claimed by his friends that he 
was re-elected, but was counted out by a par- 
lisan majority of Populists and Democrals. 
He was a delegate to the Republican National 
Convention of 1892, and was an ardent sup- 
porter of James G. Blaine for the Presidency. 
He was again elected to the Legislature in 
1802. Upon the expiration of his term, he was 
chosen as the Republican candidate for State 
Auditor. He was elected in 1804, and was re- 
elected to the same position in 1808 by the 
largest plurality of any candidate on the 
Republican State ticket. 



JOHN A. WILLARD. 



John A. Willard was born in Trenton, 
Oneida county, New York, November 0, 1833, 
and died at his home in Mankato, Minnesota, 
December 15, 1807. He was the son of Daniel 
S. and Catherine (Williams) Willard. His 
father was a farmer, and also a native of 
Oneida county, where he lived until 1867. He 
then removed with his family to Mankato, 
Minnesota, where he died in 1808, and his wife 
in 1875. They were the parents of seven chil- 
dren, of whom their son, John A., was 
the eldest. His family, on the paternal 
side, came from Weathersfield, Connecti- 
cut, to New York, in 1800, and its 
members were among the first settlers of 
Trenton, Oneida county. It was descended, 
through six generations, from Maj. Simon 
Willard, who landed in Boston from Hors- 
monden, England, in 1034, and who, in English 
history, traced his ancestry back to the be- 
ginning of the Fourteenth Century. On the 
maternal side, Mr. Willard's ancestors came 
from Wales to Philadelphia, in 1800, and soon 
after removed to the State of New York. Mr. 
Willard was educated in the public school of 
his native place and in an academy at Holland 



282 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Patent, New York, and later in a school con- 
ducted by a maternal uncle, in Utica, New 
York. His early youth was similar to that of 
must farmers' boys of his day. He attended 
•school when he could, and spent the remainder 
of his time in farm work. He always had an 
earnest desire for a better education, but his 
parents, while most willing, were not aide to 
provide the means. When seventeen years of 
age, he commenced teaching district schools 
during the winter months and worked on the 
farm in the summer seasons. This he con- 
tinued until he was twenty years of age, when 
he commenced the study of law in the city of 
Utica, and was admitted to practice in all the 
courts of New York, in 1855. He then de- 
cided to go west and seek a location for the 
practice of his profession. Having a few 
books, and money enough to reach Minnesota, 
he located in Mankato, in September, 185<i. 
He opened a law office and engaged in the 
practice until 1870, when he became interested 
in railroad construction, and was elected presi- 
dent of the company that built the line from 
Mankato to Wells, and which is now a part 
of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul system. 
In IsTi' he became interested in the manufac- 
ture of linseed oil, and, in connection with R. 
D. Hubbard and J. B. Hubbel, organized the 
Mankato Linseed Oil Company. In 1886 he 
and Mr. Hubbard were among the prime 
movers in the organization of the National 
Linseed Oil Trust, of which he was a director 
for nine years. He was interested in many 
other manufacturing and business enterprises, 
among which were the Mankato Novelty 
Works, the Standard Fiber-Ware Company, 
the Mankato Knitting Mills, the St. Paul 
White Lead and Oil Company, also brick yards, 
live stock and cattle companies. He was one 
of the inaugurators, and for over twenty years 
president, of the First National Bank of Man- 
kato; was president of the National Bank 
of Commerce at Duluth; president of the 
Granite Falls Bank, Granite Falls, Minne- 
sota, and was president and director in 
many other corporations, and was exten- 
sively known throughout the State and in 
financial circles of the countrv. He was 



for many years the leading spirit and presi- 
dent of the Mankato Board of Trade. In 1891 
he was elected mayor of Mankato without 
opposition, and served two years, declining re- 
election. He was also for several years a mem- 
ber of the board of education, a trustee of the 
Tourtellotte Hospital of Mankato, member of 
the library board, and president of the < 'itizens' 
Fire Association. During the Indian war of 
1862 he was United States commissioner, and 
all cases against soldiers and others for sell 
ing liquor to the Indians were brought before 
him. He never sought political preferment. 
Had his aspirations inclined that way, almost 
any position in the gift of his fellow-citizens 
was within his command. In 1885, Mr. Willard 
became largely interested in real estate in 
Duluth, and was active in many business en- 
terprises of that city. Upon his death the press 
of Duluth paid high tributes to his memory. 
The Duluth Herald said: 

"Mr. Willard was closely connected with 
Duluth interests, and he was so frequently in 
the city that he was regarded as virtually a 
Duluth man. and one of the most active forces 
in the upbuilding of the city. He was a pro- 
moter of enterprise, a creator of business 
interests, and he freely invested his money in 
everything which promised to be a success in 
a business way. The Northwest owes much 
to his enterprise and strong faith in its re- 
sources and future development, and his death 
is a distinct loss to all the people of Duluth. 
1 1 is difficult to fill the place of such a man: 
enterprising, energetic, broad-minded, and 
strictly honest in all his dealings with his 
fellow men.'' 

Of his career and reputation in his home city 
of Mankato, a local journal, the Mankato Re- 
view, said among other winds of encomium: 

"In any and every project, having for its 
object the advancement of the material inter 
ests of the locality in which he resided, Mr. 
Willard always took- an active and leading 
part. Few men in any community enjoyed 
more fully the confidence, respect, and esteem 
of his friends and fellow-citizens. Personally, 
he was a man of fine appearance, impressing 
one immediately with the fail of his substan- 
tial and solid worth." 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



283 



His life was a busy one, but amid all his 
varied business interests which demanded his 
unceasing care and attention, he found time to 
devote to social and literary affairs, and was 
well informed on all subjects of general in- 
iciest. He was a member of the First Presby- 
terian church of Mankato, was a Royal Arch 
Mason and a Knight Templar, and a Repub- 
lican in politics. Mr. Willard was married, 
August 23, 1865, to Miss Anna M. Sibley, who 
was horn in Pennsylvania and was a daughter 
of Reuben J. and Maria E. (Eggleston) Sibley. 
Her father was a native of Vermont and her 
mother of Ohio. Mr. Sibley came to Mankato 
in 1856, and was followed by his family a year 
later, and this was their home ever after. Mr. 
Sibley died in April, 1864, and Mrs. Sibley in 
January, 1892. To Mr. and Mrs. Willard were 
born seven children, three of whom are now 
living, viz.: William 1). Willard, vice presi- 
dent of the Mankato Mills Company; Harold 
B. Willard, now in the service of the North- 
western Telephone Exchange Company, of St. 
Paul, and Robert S. Willard, at Mankato. The 
other children died in infancy and early child- 
hood. 



GEORGE P. WILSON. 

(Jen. George P. Wilson, a prominent attor- 
ney of Minneapolis, was born at Lewis- 
burg, Pennsylvania, January 11), 1840. His 
father w r as Samuel Wilson, a farmer, of Eng- 
lish and Scotch descent. He served in the 
war of 1812 as a private soldier. His family 
were among the early settlers of New Jersey, 
before the war of the Revolution, and took 
part in the struggle for independence. George 
P. was the youngest of a family of twelve chil- 
dren, seven of whom, four brothers and three 
sisters, are still living. He attended the com- 
mon schools of his native place, the Lewisburg 
Academy, and later entered the Bucknell Uni- 
versity, at Lewisburg. He afterwards at- 
tended the Ohio Wesleyan University, of 
Delaware, Ohio, and later studied law in the 
office of Lewis & Simpson in Winona, 
Minnesota. He was admitted to the bar at 
Rochester, Minnesota, in October, 1862. He 



commenced the practice of his profession with 
his preceptors in Winona, and after the death 
of Judge Lewis, in 1867, became a member of 
the firm, under the name of Simpson & Wilson, 
in the general practice of law. He was elected 
Attorney General of the State in November, 
1873; was re-elected in 1875, and during his 
second term removed to St. Paul, and was 
again elected to the same office in the fall of 
1877 for a third term. In 1880, after the ex- 
piration of his term of service, he removed to 
Fargo, Dakota, then a Territory, where he en- 
gaged in the practice of law. He was first 
associated with Hon. W. F. Ball, under the 
firm name of Wilson & Ball, and later with 
Judge Alfred Wallin (now of the Supreme 
Court of North Dakota) as Wilson, Ball & 
Wallin. He continued practice in Fargo until 
July 1, 1887, when he removed to Minneapolis 
and there established himself in practice alone. 
In about one year he formed a partnership 
with Mr. John R, Van Derlip, with whom he 
has since continued practice under the firm 
name of Wilson & Van Derlip. General Wil- 
son has held many official positions. He was 
assistant secretary of the State Senate in 
1863-4 and 1864-5; was secretary in 1865-6 and 
1866-7; county attorney of Winona county from 
1865 to 1871; government commissioner on 
Southern Pacific Railroad in 1871, and member 
of the House of Representatives in 1872-3 from 
Winona county. He was elected to the State 
Senate for the Forty-first Senatorial District 
at the November election of 1898, for the term 
expiring January 1, 1903. He was chairman 
of the judiciary committee of the House in 
1872-.*!, was chairman of the committee on re- 
trenchment and reform in the Senate of 1899, 
and was also a member of the judiciary and 
other important committees. General Wilson 
became well known throughout the State dur- 
ing the session of 189!), in connection with a 
bill introduced by him, known as the "Younger 
Bill," providing for the parole of life prisoners 
after continuous service for twenty years, with 
the record of continuous good behavior during 
that period, which bill passed the Senate by 
a large majority, but was defeated in the 
House. One of the most distinguished men of 



284 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



the State (at one time an associate State 
officer with the subject of this sketch), who has 
known General Wilson intimately for many 
years, says: "He is an excellent public speaker, 
has great force and clearness of statement, ami 
liis method of putting things is so strong and 
forcible that he seldom fails to carry convic- 
tion; in short, he commands (he confidence and 
respect of judges and lawyers, and, as a State 
official and a citizen, he is without reproach." 
As to his standing as a legislator, the Minne- 
apolis Times, at the close of the last Legisla- 
tive session, said of General Wilson: "In 
every debate he is a leader. It is probable that 
if a vote were taken among the Senators to 
select the strongest man among them, the 
greatest number of votes would be cast for 
General Wilson." He has always been a 
standi Republican, and has taken an active 
part in almost every political campaign, his 
services being always in demand as a public 
speaker. General Wilson was married at 
Winona, Minnesota, September 26, 1866, to 
Ada Harrington, daughter of William H. Har- 
rington, a pioneer settler of Winona. They 
have one daughter, who is the wife of William 
B. Sweatt, the president of the Sweatt Manu- 
facturing Comr any, of Minneapolis, and two 
sons. Walter H., connected with the Nelson 
Tut hill Lumber Company, and Wirt Wilson, 
who served seven months in the Philippine 
war as a member of the Thirteenth Minnesota 
Volunteer Regiment, and recently graduated 
from the law department of the University of 
Minnesota. 



RICHARD T. O'CONNOR, 

Richard Thomas O'Connor was born in St. 
Paul, June 27, 1857, while Minnesota was a 
Territory and the town an unimportant place. 
His father, the late Hon. John O'Connor, was 
a well-known citizen of some prominence as 
a contractor and as a hotel proprietor. He 
was an honorable man, and held in rare private 
and public esteem, and for more than a quar- 
ter of a century was a member of the city 
council as alderman from the Fourth ward. 
He was a native of Ireland, but came to the 



United States in 1845 and located in St. Paul 
in 1855. He died in St. Paul. January !», 1883, 
His wife, the mother of R. T. O'Connor, was 
born Catherine Woulfe. She, too, was born in 
Ireland, but came to America when a girl, 
and for many years lived in Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, where she was married. She died in 
SI. Paul August 8, 1899. R. T. O'Connor has 
passed nearly all his life in his native city. He 
attended the Catholic parochial schools in 
childhood up to 1870, wh.*n he was sent to St. 
John's College at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. 
Subsequently he entered the University of 
Notre Dame, at South Bend, Indiana, and 
graduated in the commercial course of that 
institution in 1S74. when he was but seventeen 
years of age. Even when a boy, he was blight. 
brave and active, and gave promise of the 
career of prominence which he subsequently 
filled. After his graduation he returned to St 
Paul, and was employed by J. J. Hill in the 
wood, coal and oil business as office clerk and 
collector. This position he held for about three 
years, or until the fall of 1877. In 1878 he 
secured the position of deputy city clerk, 
and held it until January, 1887. Mean- 
time, in 1883, he was elected to the city 
council as alderman from the Fourth ward, to 
fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of his 
father. And now St. Paul was fast becoming 
a great city. The population had been 40,000 
in 1880, but in five years thereafter it was 
nearly 100,000. A public office had become a 
place of importance. Under the laws as they 
then were, the most prominent public position, 
the one involving the most work and the 
greatest responsibility, and withal the most 
lucrative, was that of clerk of the District 
Courts. It was an elective office, with a term 
of four years. In the fall of 1880. the Demo- 
cratic party selected as one of its brightest, 
brainiest, and most popular members, Mr. 
O'Connor, as a candidate for this office, and 
he was elected. After four years, or in 1890, 
when the population was 143,000, he was again 
elected clerk of the courts, after one of the 
hardest fought political campaigns in the his- 
tory of Ramsey county. He served as clerk 
of the courts for eight years, retiring in Jauu- 



n 





6^C^U/^\ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



285 



ary, 1895, having positively declined another 
nomination as candidate for the office — believ- 
ing, as he said, that he had been given his full 
share of the honors of his party, and of the 
people in this regard. It was during his terms 
as clerk of the courts that Mr. O'Connor at- 
tained his great reputation as an honorable 
Democratic politician — as an organizer and 
leader of political forces, who never planned 
a had campaign or ever lost a battle. He 
knew the city and county thoroughly, being 
a resident of them all his life; he probably 
knew by name more voters in them than any 
other man; he had a great fund of common 
sense and practical intelligence, and these 
qualities, added to his natural courage and 
determined spirit, made him well-nigh in- 
vincible in politics. He was always in the 
Democratic councils, always assisted the com- 
mittee-men and others in campaigns by voice 
and effort and purse, until he was recognized 
as the master spirit of his party, and it was 
mainly by his aid that the Democrats were so 
uniformly successful up to 1894. Of course 
his political opponents disliked him, but only 
because they feared him; they really admired 
the genius of the man who was so able to de- 
feat them. They knew that his warfare was 
always open and honest, and while denouncing 
him and saying all manner of evil things about 
him, they knew that he had done nothing dis 
honorable, and that not a single charge of 
illegality could be substantiated against any 
act of his doing. Mr. O'Connor is a Democrat, 
because he believes that the principles and 
policies of the Democratic party are best for 
tlic country. But he knows that principles are 
of little practical avail unless they are en- 
forced, and Democratic principles cannot be 
enforced unless the party in sympathy with 
them is in power and position to carry them 
out. The party cannot obtain and retain power 
unless it is always supported, and if occasional 
differences of opinion arise among its members 
as to temporary policies, the minority must 
defer to the fairly expressed will of the 
majority. Hence, Mr. O'Connor is and has 
been a Democrat from principle, loyal to his 
party and its candidates on all occasions, and 



giving to its men and measures, his willing 
and faithful support. As clerk of the courts, 
Mr. O'Connor was a most faithful and valuable 
official, and made an enviable record. During 
his long term of service, lasting eight years, at 
a period when the volume of the business of 
his office was far larger than it had ever been 
before, and much larger than it has been since, 
he kept the details of his duties well in hand, 
and managed them with the greatest efficiency. 
He was never remiss in his duties — never be- 
hindhand — never negligent — never at fault. 
The Judges of the District Court united in a 
strong testimonial to the worth of his services, 
and the complete success of his administration, 
and attorneys and litigants never complained. 
<>nc incident of his administration, as indicat- 
ing the character of the man, may here be giv- 
en. One of his subordinates perpetrated a series 
of forgeries and defrauded the county treasury 
of twenty-five thousand dollars. The frauds 
were detected, and Mr. O'Connor forced the 
criminal to restore the greater part of his ill- 
gotten gains. Then he had him prosecuted and 
sent to the penitentiary. Suit was brought 
by the county against Mr. O'Connor and the 
county treasurer, to compel them to restore 
the balance of the missing money. Judgment 
was obtained against the county treasurer for 
six thousand dollars, but no liability or re- 
sponsibility was found against the clerk of the 
courts, and the case was decided in his favor. 
Then, after he had been held entirely blame- 
less and under no sort of obligation for the 
criminal acts of his subordinate, Mr. O'Connor 
drew his check for the money, including the 
amount for which judgment had been rendered 
against the treasurer — and thus the county did 
not lose a cent in the end. February 21, 1895, 
President Cleveland appointed Mr. O'Connor 
United States Marshal for the District of 
Minnesota, and this position he held until 
March 17, 1899. His duties were discharged 
throughout with great efficiency and universal 
acceptability. It was during his term as 
United States Marshal that the outbreak of 
certain lawless Chippewa Indians of the Leech 
Lake band occurred, resulting in what is 
known as the battle of Sugar Point. This in- 



286 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



cident is narrated in another part of this 
volume, but as it was connected with the busi- 
ness of the United States Marshal's office, 
while Mr. O'Connor was the incumbent, addi- 
tional details may here be given. When the 
deputy marshals and the soldiers of the Third 
United States Infantry were sent to Leech 
Lake to arrest Puk-a-ma-ki-shik (or Hole in the 
Day), and the other Indians who had rescued 
him from the officer, Marshal O'Connor accom- 
panied the party. The day before the battle 
he visited the locality of the rebellious Indians 
with an interpreter, and endeavored to induce 
those for whom warrants had been issued to 
peaceably surrender. They refused, became 
menacing and violent, and Anally ordered the 
marshal away. When the expedition under 
Genera] Bacon went to Sugar Point, Marshal 
O'Connor accompanied it. A little time before 
the tight began, General Bacon ordered him 
to return to Walker on one of the small steam 
boats, and bring back the tents and other 
baggage of the soldiers, saying that the com- 
mand would encamp on Sugar 1'oinl for a few 
days. He had hardly reached the boat when 
the tiring began. The boat was out some dis- 
tance in the lake, and the Indians fired into it 
as long as it was within range. Several per- 
sons on the boat, Agent Tinker among them, 
were wounded; the boat was well peppered 
wit li shots; there was no safety anywhere, but 
Mi-. O'Connor rose to the occasion and ren- 
dered invaluable service. He visited the camp 
at the agency, where there were twenty sol- 
diers under Lieutenant Humphrey, and tried 
to induce the lieutenant to go with his squad 
to General Bacon's re-enforcement, but the 
lieutenant's orders would not permit this. 
Then he hurried to Walker, telegraphed for 
more help for the soldiers, prepared the boats 
and barges with barricades and loaded them 
with supplies, and hurried to the assistance 
of General Bacon and his sorely beset and im- 
perilled force, and soon rescued them. For his 
valuable services and good conduct generally 
in this affair, Marshal O'Connor was warmly 
commended and thanked by General Bacon in 
his official report, and his course received the 
full endorsement of his superiors and all others 



having any real knowledge of the circum- 
stances. But after the battle, and when the 
country was in the greatest excitement and 
alarm, the Marshal did not forget what he had 
gone to Leech lake for. He kept on his mis- 
sion to arrest the offending Indians, and finally 
secured the most of them and brought them 
into court, as he had been directed. It would 
take a bigger battle than that of Sugar Point 
and more Indians than five hundred to prevent 
"Dick" O'Connor from doing what he consid- 
ered to be his duty. Soon after he retired from 
the marshal's office, Mr. O'Connor engaged in 
private business affairs. He is president of 
the St. Paul Globe Company, and a member 
of the firm of O'Connor & Van Bergen, com- 
mission brokers of St. Paul; also of the firm 
of Sexton & Company, jobbers in the cigar 
trade. He is a member of the St. Paul Com- 
mercial Club, and also of the New York Demo- 
cratic Club, and popular in both these 
organizations. Mr. O'Connor is a splendid 
specimen of physical manhood. He is of stal- 
wart proportions, of athletic build and 
strength, and of notable appearance in any 
body of men. He is frank and outspoken, bluff 
and hearty, a despiser of shams and a hater 
of hypocrites. All who know him, know just 
where to find him. His word is as good as his 
bond, and his bond is as good as gold. And 
all who know him, know that his heart is big 
in proportion to its herculean frame. It has 
ever been touched by an appeal for charity, 
and a large number of his devoted friends are 
among the poor and unfortunate, whose advo- 
cate and helper he has ever been. 



WILLIAM 0. WILLISTON. 

Hon. William Chapman Williston, of Red 
Wing, Minnesota, is a native of South Carolina, 
born at Cheraw, in the county of Chesterfield, 
June 22, 1830. His parents were William King 
and Annis (Chapman) Williston, his father 
being a merchant of Cheraw. The financial 
circumstances of the family were moderate, 
yet William C. was enabled to obtain a sub- 
stantial common school education. He read 



h 



J 
1 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



287 



law in Chardon, Geauga county, Ohio, and, in 
1854, was admitted to the bar of that State. 
He practiced law for about two years in Ohio, 
then removed to Iowa, where he remained for 
a few months. In 1S">7 he removed to Red 
Wing, and soon became established in his pro- 
fession; and this city has been his home con- 
tinuously from that date until the present 
time. ] titling the Civil war, however, he was 
absent on military duly much of the time for 
two years. He enlisted, in 1802, as a private 
in Company G of the Seventh Minnesota In- 
fantry Volunteers, and was discharged from 
the service in 18(54 with the rank of captain. 
Judge Williston has been a member of two 
law partnerships, the Hist of which was formed 
in 1859, when he became associated with Hon. 
E. T. Wilder, of Red Wing. This tirm was 
succeeded by another, in which Hon. O. M. 
Hall was the junior partner. During his pro- 
fessional career. Judge Williston has tilled 
with efficiency the offices of both city and 
county attorney; and has been a member of 
the bench of Minnesota since 1891, in which 
year he was appointed Judge of the District 
Court. He was elected in the following year, 
and again in 1898, and to-day enjoys the repu- 
tation of being a peer of the foremost judges 
of the State. As an all-around business law- 
yer, also, he ranks among the leaders of the 
bar of Minnesota, his success being attribut- 
able jointly to superior ability and an unusual 
capacity for thorough and continuous work. 
In politics the Judge is a Democrat, but con- 
servative in this as in all other departments of 
life. He is, however, a man of strong convic- 
tions and a deep reverence for justice, and the 
force of his character has been recognized and 
appreciated in public, as well as private, life. 
Judge Williston has served four years in the 
State Legislature, having been a member of 
the House of Representatives in 187.'? 4, and 
a Senator during the years 1876-7. Judge 
Williston has advanced far in Masonry, 
having at one time been Grand Commander 
of the Knights Templar of Minnesota. As tin 
Odd Fellow, also, he has held the position of 
Grand Master and Grand Representative of 
that order in Minnesota. In religious faith he 



is an Episcopalian, being a communicant of 
the church. On April 12, 1854, Judge Willis 
ton was married to Mary Eliza Canfield, of 
Chardon, Ohio. Four children were born to 
them — two boys and two girls. The sous both 
died in infancy; the daughters are: Mrs. John 
H. Rich and Mrs. L. (J. Phelps, both of whom 
arc residents of Red Wing. 



RENSSELAER D. HUBBARD. 

Rensselaer Dean Hubbard, of Mankato, 
prominent as a manufacturer and one of 
the strongest and most influential among 
the leading business men of Minnesota, was 
born on his father's farm in Maryland 
township, Otsego county, New York, De- 
cember 14, 1837. His father, Oliver B. Hub- 
bard, was born at Hartford, Connecticut, 
in 1800, and came with his family to Ot- 
sego county, New York, in 1809. His an- 
cestors were residents of Connecticut in 
Colonial times, and some of them were promi- 
nent characters in early history. His mother, 
whose maiden name was Lavinia Chase, was 
also a native of Connecticut, and from an old 
New England family, several of whose mem- 
bers were soldiers in the war of the Revolution. 
Oliver B. Hubbard was an honest, industrious 
farmer and a good citizen, but he was not 
acquisitive or thrifty, and his sons were 
obliged to assist in support of the family, and 
had to "pick up" what education they could 
between the intervals of farm work. His son, 
the subject hereof, attended the district school 
for several winter seasons, and later was for 
a few months in a select school, which was 
conducted by Prof. W. F. Perry, who was 
for many years superintendent of the public 
schools ;it Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the age 
of fifteen he went out to work, securing jobs 
at anything he could And. His first cash earn- 
ings for six months' labor on a farm amounted 
to fifty dollars, every cent of which he gave 
to his good mother. After this he worked a 
month for a fanner, for which he was to re- 
ceive eight dollars; but when he had cum 



2<S8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



pJeted his contract his employer told him he 
had no money and offered him a calf in full 
payment. With a rope about its neck he led 
away the calf, and after a little time sold it 
for eighl dollars. This money he spent on 
himself. With a part of it he boughl a pair 
of hoots, costing five dollars, and the balance 
lie paid for three months' tuition in the select 
school mentioned, working nights and morn- 
ings for his board. When his three dollars 
of capital was exhausted he left school 
and obtained work with a surveying par- 
ty then engaged in locating the Albanj & 
Susquehanna Railroad — now called the Del- 
aware & Hudson Canal Company — running 
from Albany to Ringhamton. He was nat- 
urally industrious, plucky, and venturesome. 
In the spring of 1854, when a lad of 
but sixteen years of age, he joined a party 
composed of seven or eight men who were 
going to California. The party left New York 
April 5, and arrived at San Francisco May 
5, going via the Nicaragua route, by sea. In 
California, young Hubbard secured work on 
a farm in Yolo county, in the Sacramento val- 
ley, where he was engaged for two years. At fif- 
ty dollars a month, the prevailing wages in Cal- 
ifornia at the time, he had saved at the end of 
his term $1,126, every dollar of which sum he 
sent home to his parents. He took up a claim 
and located on a tract of land, where he tried 
farming on his own account, but droughty 
seasons prevented his raising full crops. Tired 
of farming, he undertook a business venture. 
In August, 1857, he purchased a stock of sup- 
plies in Sacramento and took them over the 
mountains to the Humboldt river country, and 
engaged in trading them to immigrants in 
exchange for exhausted and "used up" live 
stock. These broken down animals he fed and 
cared for until they were in good condition 
again, when he would trade them for other 
•'worn out" stock. Often he would receive 
three poor cattle in exchange for one that was 
"fresh" and able to travel. He continued in 
this business for about four months, when he 
returned to his claim. In July, 1858, he went 
to Fraser river, in British Columbia, at the 
time of the gold excitement in that region. He 



went by water and landed at Whatcom, on 
Bellingham hay. Here he purchased a small 
boat, on credit, and loading it with a cargo 
of provisions — which he also bought on credit 
— and with some passengers and their bag- 
gage, rowed and poled it up the river to the 
mines. He finally established and operated a 
line of rowboats to and from Victoria and 
Bellingham bay and to Fort Yale, on the 
Fraser river, for about nine months, when he 
returned to California, en route for "the 
States." He landed in New York on Christ- 
mas eve, 185!). He was at his old home in 
Otsego county until in March. 1860, when he 
again went to California. In a few mouths 
after his return to the Golden State he se- 
cured a situation in Sacramento as a clerk iu 
a grocery store at fifty dollars a month. After 
four months he was in full charge of the store 
at a salary of one hundred and sixty dol- 
lars a month. He was in this position 
until January, 1863, when he returned to 
New York, intending to enlist in the Union 
army, but on the journey lie was prostrated 
with a serious attack of pueumonia. As soon 
as he was able to travel he went home and 
attempted to enlist, but was rejected on ac- 
count of his bad physical condition. He then 
went to Sidney Plains, New York, rented a 
piece of land and engaged in tobacco culture 
for about two years. Meantime he acted the 
part of a good loyal citizen, aided in recruiting 
soldiers for the army, and unable to enlist him- 
self because of his physical disabilities, sent a 
substitute into the service. April 9, 1863, he 
married Miss Mary E. Cook, a daughter of 
Harvey W. Cook, of his native village. In the 
fall of 1866 he removed to Corry, Pennsylvania, 
and established a grocery business, which 
proved a very profitable venture. Starting 
with a capital of $2,000, in less than four years 
he had cleared about $30,000. Enough has 
been given of the details of Mr. Hubbard's 
varied career to show that he was always a 
man of parts and resources, and of great ac- 
tivity and industry. If he could not do some- 
thing he preferred, he could and did do 
something else. At any rate, he was never 
idle. Instead of waiting for "something to 



P.IOURAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



289 



turn up," he went to work and tinned some- 
thing iij). Whether the iron was hot or cold, 
lie "kept a-hammering," to use one of Abraham 
Lincoln's favorite expressions. In 1870, Mr. 
Hubbard, accompanied by his wife litis time, 
made another trip to California by water, and 
arrived at San Francisco at the breaking out 
of the Franco-Prussian war. He intended en- 
gaging in banking, and took with him about 
fl 1)0,0110, the greater part of which sum had 
been entrusted to him by certain friends. But 
on account of the unsettled condition of the 
money market, he decided to forego his in- 
tention and started on his return to the East. 
Going by rail to Omaha and thence to Daven- 
port, at the latter place he took a boat for 
Winona, Minnesota. II was in this year that 
the Northwestern Railroad was completed to 
Mankato. After traveling over the country 
for some weeks he finally decided to locale 
permanently at Mankato, and did so. He built 
a warehouse and began buying wheat, con- 
tinuing in that business until March, 1S72, 
when with the late J. A. Willard and J. B. 
Hubbell he organized the Mankato Linseed Oil 
Company, of which he was the manager for 
eleven years, going through a period of great 
depression, but finally making the enterprise 
financially successful. In 1ST!) he established 
the Mankato Milling Company, with himself 
as president, George M. Palmer, secretary, and 
William Pierson, genera] manager. For the 
first few months, owing to the radical changes 
which were being made in the milling process, 
the business was not profitable. Mr. Hubbard 
purchased the interests of his associates and 
has continued to operate the mill since, first 
under the firm name of R. I). Hubbard & Cem 
pany, with F. L. Waters as partner, then from 
1894 to 1807 as the R. D. Hubbard Milling Com 
pany, and since 18!)7 as the Hubbard Milling 
Company. The mill was built in 1878 and re- 
constructed in 1870, when its character was 
changed from the stone system to the roller 
process, with all the latest improved machin- 
ery for flour making. Its present capacity 
is 1,200 barrels daily, and 1,500,000 bushels 
of wheat pass through the mill annually. In 
1882, Mr. Hubbard, with J. J. Thompson, es- 



tablished a large live stock business in Custer 
county, Montana, taking from Minnesota to 
the great ranch 5,500 head of cattle in two 
years. About this time, associated with Capt. 
Thomas J". (Sere, he established the large lin- 
seed oil works at Sioux City, Iowa. These 
mills were of the largest capacity and the best 
equipped for their purpose probably in the 
world. They cost $275,000, and had a capacity 
of crushing 2,000 bushels of flaxseed per day. 
They were operated by Hubbard & Gere for 
three years, and in 1887 were sold to the Lin- 
seed Oil Trust. In 1802 he purchased the 
interest of Mr. S. H. Grannis, in the firm of 
Grannis & Palmer, and organized the Hub- 
bard & Palmer Elevator Company, which has 
forty elevators on the Chicago, St. Paul & 
Minneapolis and the Omaha Division of the 
Northwestern Railway, chiefly for the purchase 1 
and storage of grain and for supplying wheat 
for the mill at Mankato. In 1807 the business 
was incorporated as Hubbard, Palmer & Co., 
with Geoi'ge M. Palmer president. Mr. Hub 
bard was born a Democrat, and voted for 
.lames Buchanan for President in 1856, but 
ever since has voted for the Republican candi- 
dates for National offices. He has always been 
too much occupied with business affairs to give 
much attention to party politics, and is not a 
politician. He has served one term in (lie 
Mankato city council, the only public official 
position he ever cared to hold. As a citizen 
he has always been eminently public-spirited, 
ever ready to aid and encourage, with his in- 
fluence and his money, any enterprise for the 
public good. His position and condition in the 
world are the result of his own efforts. He 
is not only the architect but the builder of his 
fortune, and his entire business career, from 
tin 1 time he worked for and sold the eight- 
dollar calf, to his ownership and management 
of his magnificent manufacturing enterprises, 
has been honorable, straight-forward, and 
characterized by the strictest integrity. His 
career exemplifies what may be accomplished 
by the poorest American boy who will adopt 
and never depart from a course of industry, 
perseverance, economy and general honorable 
conduct. One of his fellow citizens says: 



290 



BIOGKAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



"Mr. Hubbard is a man of fine personal ap- 
pearance, of large form and manly build, and 
of impressive address. His mind and ambition 
have an inclination for great projects, and 
when enlisted in them his tireless industry and 
economical tendencies make them successful, 
frequently under adverse circumstances. Mr. 
Hubbard is a mau of excellent business 
capacity, a hard worker, and gives to his un- 
dertakings the closest and most exacting per- 
sonal attention. He makes it a point to 
understand every department of his large busi- 
ness affairs. H« has contributed much to the 
development and prosperity of Mankato, and 
the 'big mill,' as it is familiarly called, is a 
monument to his enterprise, sagacity, and in- 
dustry." 

Mr. Hubbard's wife died, April 21, 1877, 
leaving one son, Jay Hubbard, born January 
8, 1870, now in business with his father. Mr. 
Hubbard was again married October 7, 1S78, 
to Miss Prank Griffith, stepdaughter of James 
Cannon, of Mankato. They are the parents of 
two daughters — Kate and Mary E. The family 
attend the Presbyterian church, and are promi- 
nent members of society in Mankato. They 
have a lovely and well-appointed home at No. 
606 Broad street. 



ANDREW R. McGILL. 

Hon. Andrew Ryan McGill, Governor of 
Minnesota in 1887 and 1888, the years of the 
greatest development and general prosperity 
in the history of the State, was born at 
Saegertown, Crawford county, Pennsylvania, 
February 19, 1840. He is of Irish and English 
ancestry. His paternal grandfather, Patrick 
McGill, came from County Antrim, Ireland, to 
America about 1774, when but twelve years 
of age. He was, with an older brother, con- 
nected with the American army during the 
war of the Revolution, and after the war set- 
tled in Pennsylvania, first in Northumberland 
county, and later emigrating to the western 
part of the State, where he secured a large 
tract of land in what subsequently became 
Crawford county. This land became the "old 
homestead" of the McGill family, and the first 
house built thereon bv Patrick McGill still 



stands on a part of the present site of Saeger- 
town. Governor McGill's father was Charles 
Dillon McGill, and the maiden name of his 
mother was Angeline Martin. She was of 
Waterford, Pennsylvania, a daughter of 
Arinaml Martin, who was a soldier in the war 
of 1812, and a granddaughter of Charles Mar- 
tin, of English birth, who served in the Patriot 
army during the Revolution and after the war 
was appointed by ^Yashingto^ an officer of 
the Second United States Infantry. Subse- 
quently he resigned from the regular army and 
became a major general of Pennsylvania 
troops. Governor McGill's mother was a 
woman of strong character, of high Christian 
conduct, and rare mental qualities. She died 
when he was but seven years of age, but not 
before she had impressed some of her char- 
acteristics upon him, and in effect shaped the 
course of his life. The boy who was to become 
the Governor of a great Commonwealth was 
reared to young manhood in his native valley 
of the Venango, a rather secluded locality, 
"far from the madding crowd's ignoble 
strife.'' His education was received in the pub- 
lic schools and at Saegertown Academy. 
These were good schools, practical and thor- 
ough, and he was a good student, studious and 
industrious, and made the most and the best of 
them. When he was nineteen years of age — 
or in 1859 — he set out in life on his own ac- 
count. He had not much to begin with aside 
from his education, and he did that which lie 
could do best. He went to Kentucky and 
engaged in teaching school. He was successful 
as a teacher, but in a year or so, when the war 
clouds began to lower, Kentucky became an 
unpleasant place of abode for a Northern man 
of Union sentiments, and, in the spring of 1801, 
the war of the Rebellion having begun, he re- 
turned to the North. He then decided to go 
to the Northwest, and June 10, 1861, he arrived 
in Minnesota. Again he engaged in teaching 
and became principal of the public schools of 
St. Peter. The following year, or August 19, 
1862, he enlisted in the Union army in Com- 
pany D, Ninth Minnesota Infantry, and was 
made orderly sergeant of the company. His 
muster in dated from the second day of the 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



291 



great Indian outbreak, in whose suppression 

his regiment took part. A year later, owing 
In protracted and serious ill-health, he was 
discharged from the service for disabilities. 
Not long after leaving the military service he 
was elected superintendent of schools for 
Nicollet county, and served two terms. He 
now became a somewhat prominent public 
character. In 1865 and 1866 he edited the St. 
Peter Tribune, a Republican paper with which 
lie was connected as publisher for several 
years thereafter. lie was elected clerk of the 
District Court for Nicollet county and served 
four years, and during this time studied law 
under the instruction of Hon. Horace Austin, 
then Judge of the District Court, by whom, 
in 1868, he was admitted to the bar. Two 
years later, when Judge Austin became Gov- 
ernor, Mr. McGill was appointed his private 
secretary. In 187-'! he was appointed State In- 
surance Commissioner, and by successive re- 
appointments held the position for thirteen 
years. The acceptability of his service and its 
general efficiency may be inferred from its 
length. His reputation as an authority on in- 
surance became far-reaching, and his reports 
are yet regarded as among the most valuable 
ever issued on the subject. In 1886 the Re- 
publicans nominated him for Governor. The 
canvass that followed was one of the most 
active and the election one of the closest in 
the history of the State. The temperance 
question was to the fore, and the Republican 
party had declared for local option and high 
license. The friends of the saloon did not want 
a high license system, and the Prohibitionists 
did not want a license system at all, and so 
both these (dements were against McGill. 
His Democratic opponent had the support of 
all the liquor interests, both inside and outside 
of the Republican party, as well as that of 
large numbers of the Prohibitionists, who took 
this way of resenting the proposition of any 
State license whatever. McGill was a man 
of unassailable character and manly deport- 
ment, and conducted his campaign upon a 
dignified plane. He was elected, and under 
all the circumstances his election was a great 
triumph for the principle he advocated, and 



for himself personally. He was one of the best 
chief executives the State has ever had. His 
administration covered a period when the 
State was being developed and improved as 
never before or since, when its business inter- 
ests were being most rapidly advanced, when 
it was busiest and most bustling. And yet his 
opponents had loudly and volubly predicted 
that if elected he would "ruin the State" — a 
familiar party cry. The records and the history 
of his term show what was accomplished. One 
of the most important laws enacted under iiis 
administration was what is known as the high 
license law. This aimed at the better control 
of the liquor traffic and has become the model 
for similar legislation in other States. It was 
the principle involved in this law on which 
the campaign was fought out, and Governor 
McGill, having won the election, insisted on 
the passage of the law; and it was through his 
efforts and influence that the legislation was 
secured. Of its wisdom and salutary workings 
it is perhaps sufficient to say that its repeal 
has never been attempted. Other important 
measures placed on the statute books during 
Governor McGill's administration were the 
present railroad laws relating to transporta- 
tion, storage, and grading of wheat; the 
watering of railroad stock, etc.; temper 
ance legislation was materially strength- 
ened and improved; the tax laws were 
simplified; contracts detrimental to labor 
were abolished; the State Soldiers' Home 
and the State Reformatory were estab- 
lished; the Bureau of Labor Statistics was 
created, and numerous other important 
measures were inaugurated. Governor Mc- 
Gill may await with unconcern the judg- 
ment of posterity upon his administration. 
Upon his retirement from the chief executive's 
chair. Governor McGill became engaged in the 
banking and trust business, from which he 
finally retired in 1896, on account of ill health. 
At present he is not in active business, al- 
though he is vice president and director in two 
active concerns, one a loan and the other a 
manufacturing company. He is also State 
Senator from the Thirty-seventh Senatorial 
District of Minnesota, having been elected, in 



-' I- 



P.IOGRAPHY (IF MINNESOTA. 



1898, for the regular term of four years. lie joined the tidal wave of emigration which se1 

resides at St. Anthony Park, a suburb of St. in thither. In 1S4!> he sailed for California, 

Paul, where lie has a pleasant home, (lover- going "round the horn." The voyagers were 

nor McGill has been twice married. His first driven from their course by severe storms, and 

wife was Eliza E. Bryant, a daughter of touched the Cape Verde islands, off the coast 

Charles S. Bryant, A. M., a lawyer and an of Africa. They then sailed west, stopping at 

author of some prominence, formerly of St. Rio Janeiro, and finally reached San Fran 

Peter, and whose history of the Sioux War risen just 310 days after leaving New Orleans, 

in Minnesota is regarded as the best on the Mr. Valentine's fortunes, like those of most 

subject. She died in 1S77. leaving two sons, miners, varied, and soon alter the discovery 

named Charles II. and Robert C, and a daugh- of gold in Australia, he visited that country. 

ter named Lida B. McGill. The oldest son, After an eventful life of several years, he re- 

Capt. Charles II. McGill, served during the turned to the United Slates and located in St. 

Spanish war as assistant adjutant general, Paul, in the winter of 1855 and '."><>. In 1865 

with the rank of captain. In 1880 Governor Mr. Valentine became heavily interested in the 

McGill married Mary E. Wilson, a daughter wheat and elevator business, and was man- 

of Dr. J. C. Wilson, of Edinborough, Pennsyl- ager of the elevators, and in fact the entire 

vania. By this marriage there are two sons, business of cereal buying and handling for 

named Wilson and Thomas McGill. The ex- Commodore Davidson for several years. His 

Governor is a gentleman of admirable personal success induced him to start the well-known 

qualities. Plain, unassuming, frank and open, Humboldt farm near St. Vincent, in 1S82, and 

he attracts acquaintance and admiration at one he invested quite heavily in orange groves in 

and the same time. He has a quiet, dignified Florida, where he spent several winters. Ap 

manner, but is readily accessible to all. re- predating the commercial importance of St. 

gardless of rank or station. He is a man of Paul, by reason of his extensive acquaintance 

large information and of sound ideas, a with the vast region tributary to the city, he 

staunch friend, and firm in his convictions. He invested largely in real estate, and built the 

does not know how to be a trimmer and a fine block on Wabasha street, known as the 

trickster, and does not care to learn. Valentine Block. Mr. Valentine served as 

alderman of the city for three years, and was 
. captain of Company <>, Sixth Minnesota In- 
fantry Volunteers, until January, 1863, when 
1IVXIFI H VALENTINE '"' , '*' s ig |1,,, l and returned to St. Paul. Up to 

the time of his death Mr. Valentine was an 

Daniel Hillman Valentine was born in Cin- active, energetic business man. and an up- 

cinnati, Ohio, February l(i, 1SH7, and died in right, conscientious and progressive citizen. 

St. Paul, May 15, 1890. He was the son of His many years' experience among men in 

Charles and Alice (Woodmansee) Valentine, distant and rapidly improving portions of the 

who were both natives of New Jersey. After world, gave him a knowledge of life which was 

attending the common schools of his native of incalculable value to him as a business man. 

place, he took a course at Woodford College, In 1858 .Mr. Valentine married Miss Amelia 

in the same city. After leaving college he re- E. Meissner, who was a native of Pennsylvania, 

mained in Cincinnati until 1S4S, when he went but a resident of Cincinnati at the time of their 

to New Orleans and found employment as a marriage. To them were born two sons and 

teacher. He was taught the French language three daughters: Charles, Daniel F., Amelia. 

by a Catholic priest, anil then took a position Edith and Helen, (hie of the early settlers 

as tutor in a French family, giving the chil- of St. Paul, who was a member of Captain 

dreii instruction in the English branches. Valentine's company during the war of the 

Upon the discovery of gold in California he Rebellion, says of him: 




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P.IOGRAPnY OF MINNESOTA. 



293 



"Being a member of Captain Valentine's 
company in the Sixth Minnesota Volunteer 

Infantry, during his entire service, I had ample 
opportunity to become acquainted with his 
personality and to judge of him as a soldier and 
a man. He was in active service alum! two 
years, when he resigned on account of ill 
health. He participated with his regiment in 
the battles of Birch Coolie and Wood Lake, 
Minnesota, and in the march and battles of 
the campaign to the Missouri river in 1862 and 
'<;::. In this campaign the total distance 
marched was 1,600 miles, besides fighting three 
or four battles. Captain Valentine was a man 
of but few words. Though exacting and strict 
iu discipline, he was not a martinet, but was 
perfectly just to his men. lie took the same 
rations and discomforts and dangers that fell 
to the lot of the enlisted men. He was ex 
ceedingly courageous and possessed of the 
greatest amount of endurance. A man of the 
strictest integrity and high moral character, 
he will long be remembered among the sturdy 
pioneers who were identified with the early 
history of the city of St. Paul." 



THOMAS CANTY. 



Judge Thomas Canty, of Minneapolis, was 
born in the city of London, April i'~>. 1854, 
of Irish ancestry on both sides. His father, 
Jeremiah Canty, and his mother, whose 
maiden name was Anna Stanton, were 
both natives of the County Kerry, in the 
Emerald Isle. His paternal grandfather, 
Thomas Canty, from whom he was named, was 
at one time a well-to-do Irish farmer; but the 
sore famine of 1848 impoverished him, as it 
did many others, and the children were forced 
to go abroad. Jeremiah went to London, and 
here, while in humble but honorable service, 
he met Anna Stanton, another fugitive from 
the famine, and married her. In 1856, Jere- 
miah Canty came, with his family, to the 
United States, settling in Detroit. .Subse- 
quently he lived at Lodi, Wisconsin; in Clay- 
ton county. Iowa, and finally he purchased and 
settled on a farm in Monona, Iowa, and here 
he died in 1S74, leaving a distressed widow 
with seven children. Jeremiah Canty, though 
poor, was honest, industrious, bore a good 
name, and was at all times desirous of the 



welfare of his family. He kept his children in 
the public schools when he could, and his son 
Thomas was an apt and precocious pupil. But 
after he was nine years of age, the boy had to 
assist his father, and could attend school only 
a few months each winter. But he was bright, 
ambitious and industrious, and spent all his 
spare time with his books. He became a good 
scholar for a lad of his years, and was 
especially proficient in mathematics. When 
he was but thirteen years of age, there was a 
controversy between his father and the owner 
of the land on which he was a tenant, in re- 
gard to the amount of the rent that ought to 
be paid. The point in dispute was as to the 
area of the land occupied, and it was agreed 
that the farm should be surveyed. Thomas, 
in his examination of the surveyor's figures, 
found a big error in them, and at once setting 
out, he walked fourteeu miles through a snow- 
storm to the surveyor's house and had the 
mistake corrected. As the result he saved his 
father sixty dollars and prevented a law-suit. 
When he was but a boy, he selected his future 
vocation. His good mother, a woman of a 
practical turn of mind, noted that the boy was 
"handy with tools," and wanted him to become 
a blacksmith — a calling for which his stout 
physique seemed to adapt him — but Thomas 
always insisted that he intended to be a law- 
yer. When he was but fifteen, he passed a 
thorough examination in Clayton county, 
Iowa, and received a teacher's first-class cer- 
tificate, allowing him to teach in the public 
schools of the county, but, of course, so young 
a boy could not get a position. He was not 
discouraged, but in the intervals between his 
hours of hard work, kept up his studies, mas- 
tering everything he attempted. In 1ST2, at 
the age of eighteen, he left the humble family 
homestead and set out for the South, where 
he hoped to find a position as teacher. He 
had but little money, and when he reached 
Carbondale, a coal-mining town in Southern 
Illinois, he found himself penniless and friend- 
less. Luckily he secured a job, even though it 
involved working sixteen hours a day, ami 
driving a refractory mule — the motive power 
of a machine employed in hoisting the laden 



294 



lilooKAl'IIY ()K MINNESOTA. 



buckets out of a coal shaft. At this work he 
earned enough money to take him to Texas. 
He taught school in the Lone Star State for 
four years, in the meantime keeping up his 
studies and applying himself so diligently that 
he secured a better education than the average 
college course would have given him. Mean- 
while his father died, and the faithful son went 
back In the Lowa farm, to help his mother take 
care of the family. He worked hard on the 
farm for two years, and now began to employ 
his spare time in the study of law. There were 
crop failures, and other disasters, and debts 
accumulated on the farm. These debts young 
Canty assumed as his personal obligations. 
He was determined to pay them, but was just 
as determined not to pay them out of the 
"profits" of farming. In a contest for the 
position of principal of a high school, which 
paid a good salary, this self-taught young man 
defeated two college graduates, one of Har- 
vard and the other of the University of Wis- 
consin. Out of his first year's earnings he paid 
a thousand dollars of his debts, and easily 

obtained an extension of tin n the balance, 

which he subsequently paid. Ilis private study 
of law became so extended that in the spring 
of L880 lie concluded to ^o to Dakota, then 
a Territory, and engage in the practice. He 
went to Grand Forks, but did not like the 
situation; whereupon he came to Minneapolis, 
and. on the 1st of October, entered the law 
office of Hon. Seagrave Smith, and was ad- 
mitted to the bar in February following. The 
city was full of lawyers, many of them long 
established, of wide reputation, and of emi- 
nence in the profession. He was young, in- 
experienced, unknown, and so poor that for 
some time he was obliged to keep "bachelor's 
hall," or board himself. Hut very soon he was 
on the high-road to success, for in law, as in 
nature, the fittest survive and rise. His fust 
case was a contest over the title to a tract of 
land near Lake .Minnetonka, which had been 
lost by two prominent attorneys. Canty re- 
opened the case, adopted a new line of defense, 
and won his cause. This success gave him a 
reputation, and other business followed, so 
that he was soon actively engaged, and had no 



lime to cook his own meals. A notable series 
of cases which he won and which attracted 
public attention, were those of certain em- 
ployes against the contractors engaged in 
opening Sixth avenue, north. Fourteen able 
lawyers were against him. but he won every 
case. The cases were carried to the Supreme 
Court, where Mr. Canty won every fight. He 
came rapidly into local distinction as one who 
knew (In- law and how to try a case. At the 
time of a noted strike among the street car 
employes of Minneapolis, he won great reputa- 
tion and popular favor, especially among the 
winking people, by his successful resistance 
of the action of the municipal court in sen- 
tencing to the workhouse certain men who had 
been convicted of unlawful conduct during the 
strike, but who, he claimed, were entirely in- 
nocent. He took these men out of jail by that 
sublime measure born of American liberty, the 
habeas corpus, carried their cases before the 
District Court, and secured their release. The 
working people, always grateful for the serv- 
ices of a friend, came to have an opportunity 
of rewarding their champion i he next year, and 
they did mil let it pass. -Indue Canty was a 
Republican until after the passage of the Mc- 
Kinley high tariff bill, in 1890. His first vote 
was cast for the Hayes and Wheeler electors 
in lslli. but he has never believed that they 
were fairly elected. Tn local politics he was 
always independent, and voted for those he 
believed to be the best men. He had taken 
some interest in politics, but was besl known 
as a sound lawyer of a judicial bent, and was 
very popular personally throughout the city. 
His public renunciation of the Republican 
party, in the summer of 1890, created some- 
thing of a sensation. The next fall, the 
Democrats, then in a hopeless minority in 
Minneapolis, nominated him for one of the Dis- 
trict Court Judges of Hennepin county, and 
he was elected for a term of six years. Judge 
Canty's record on the District Bench was that 
of a careful, painstaking and efficient jurist. 
and lure lie won the reputation which made 
him a Judge of the State Supreme Court. Tn 
the latter eminent position, he has further dis- 
tinguished himself. Some of his opinions have 




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biography of Minnesota. 



295 



become established authorities upon original 
propositions and arc much cited. Ho wrote the 
opinion of the court in the cause celebre, en- 
titled Stevenson vs. The Great Northern Rail- 
way Company (69 .Minn. Rep., :?58; 72 N. W. 
Rep.. 713), decided in October, 1807, and the 
authorship of this opinion would alone make 
any man famous. The ablest and most astute 
attorneys of the Northwest argued this case. 
Judge Canty's opinion, while elaborate and ex- 
haustive, so as to cover the entire ground, was 
invaluable to the people and an unassailable 
exposition of the law. It fixed the status of the 
State Railroad Commission as an authority to 
be obeyed and respected, and laid down cer- 
tain principles to be observed in the regulation 
of railway charges, which must prove of last- 
ing benefit to the Commonwealth. Tn 1898 
Judge Canty was the candidate of the Demo- 
cratic and Feople's parties of the State for re- 
election, but he and his learned and able 
Democratic associates. Judges Mitchell and 
Buck, were defeated by the Republican nomi- 
nees, although Judge Canty ran several thou- 
sand votes ahead of his ticket, not including 
its head. Although a bachelor. Judge Canty 
is well known socially, and has hosts of warm 
personal friends. He has attained the thirty- 
second degree. Scottish Rite Mason, and is a 
Mystic Shriner. He is a member of the Odd 
Fellows and of the order of Elks. His integrity 
and uprightness as a man have never been 
questioned, and he has a good name, which 
is better than riches. 



JOHN 0. WISE. 



Hon. John Claggett Wise, of Mankato, 
the oldest newspaper man in Minnesota 
in the particular of long and continuous 
service, and the founder and present ed- 
itor and proprietor of the Mankato Review, 
is a native of Maryland, born at Hagers- 
town, September 4. 1834. His parents were 
Richard and Sarah (Cline) Wise, both na- 
tive Marylanders. His father was of Scotch 
Irish descent, an industrious, prosperous citi- 
zen, well known, and held in esteem in the 



community where he spent his long and useful 
life. He died at his home in Hagerstown, at 
the advanced age of ninety-one years. His 
family consisted of nine children — six sons and 
three daughters — John C. being the fifth child 
and second son. Mr. Wise has been a printer 
from boyhood. Leaving the Hagerstown Acad 
emy at the age of thirteen, he entered a print- 
ing office as an apprentice, serving four yens. 
At seventeen he went to Baltimore and worked 
as a "jour"' on different papers for nearly a 
year. He then returned to Hagerstown and 
purchased and published a country newspaper 
called the Clear Spring Whig. The paper 
warmly supported General Scott, the Whig 
candidate for President, in 1852, while its ed- 
itor lacked three years of being old enough 
to vote. At the close of the unsuccessful cam- 
paign, .Mr. Wise sold his newspaper and went 
to Washington City and worked in the office 
of the Congressional Globe for a year. He 
then went to Cincinnati and worked in the 
different newspaper offices of the city for about 
eighteen months. He was what was known in 
the old days of hand type-setting as a "fast" 
compositor and a correct one. always had a 
long "string" and earned good wages. From 
Cincinnati he returned to Washington and was 
chief make-up of the imposing room of the 
Congressional Globe until in the spring of 
1855. At this period the old-time Democratic 
party was in full power, the country was at 
peace and prosperous, and the Northwest was 
being developed. A company was formed in 
Washington to lay out and build the city of 
Superior, Wisconsin. Its members were W. 
W. Corcoran, the renowned old banker of 
Washington; Henry M. Rice of Minnesota; 
John W. Forney, and General Dawson, of 
Pennsylvania; John C. Breckinridge and Sen 
at or Beck, of Kentucky; Stephen A. Douglas, 
of Illinois, and many other distinguished pub- 
lic men, among them several Southern Sen 
ators. They induced Mr. Wise and another 
young man named Washington Ashton to es- 
tablish a newspaper at Superior. Wise and 
Ashton purchased a printing plant in Phila- 
delphia and in due time established and issued 
the Superior Chronicle, the first newspaper 



296 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



printed at the head of Lake Superior. The 
printing office was in a log building, one of 
the first structures built in the place. Wise 
and Asliton published the Chronicle for liner 
years, during which time Superior grew from 
a village with a population of less than 300 
to a city of more than 3,000 people. In 1858, 
when the effects of the financial panic came 
with disastrous force upon the country, Mr. 
Wise disposed of his interests in Superior, re- 
turned to Washington and again went to work 
in the Congressional Globe office. In the spring 
of 1S59 he removed to Mankato and established 
the Mankato Record, a Democratic weekly. In 
1800 he started the Semi-Weekly Record, the 
first twice-a-w ? eek paper in the State outside 
of St. Raul. lie sold the Record, in the fall 
of 1808, to Orville Brown, who changed its 
political character to a Republican journal; 
afterwards it was merged into the Mankato 
Free Press. In the spring of 1869, in company 
with Mr. E. C. Payne, he started the Mankato 
Review, becoming sole proprietor and editor 
the following year. In 1883 his sons, Charles 
E. and John C. Jr., were associated with him. 
In 1892 they started the Daily Review, and 
since have published both a daily and weekly 
edition. The Review is a strong, well made- 
up journal, of real influence, and has always 
had a large circulation and a profitable patron- 
age generally. It is commonly believed that 
the country papers are the only truly inde- 
pendent journals of the day. They are not 
controlled by outside corporations and com- 
bined interests, and say what they really be- 
lieve uninfluenced by powers behind them and 
not dictated to by some one with a "cinch" 
upon them. The Mankato Review is a model 
paper of this class. During his long resi- 
dence in .Mankato, no other man has come 
to stand higher in the general esteem of his 
fellow citizens than John 0. Wise. They have 
always given him their confidence and tie 
quently honored him. At the time of the vil- 
lage incorporation of Mankato he was a 
member of the first council. For six years he 
was a member of the board of education and 
its president one year. In 1867 Governor Mar 
shall selected him as one of ;i committee for 



the relief of the settlers of the southwestern 
portion of the State who had been ruined by 
hailstorms, and in 1873 Governor Davis ap- 
pointed him a commissioner of the State to 
relieve the grasshopper sufferers, lie was one 
of the original trustees and directors of Tour- 
tellotte Hospital, superintending its construc- 
tion, and one of the incorporators of the 
Mankato Board of Trade. In the latter organi- 
zation he was for twenty six years continuously 
a director and was president for one term. 
When the Whig party dissolved, Mr. Wise be- 
came a Democrat, and has steadfastly contin- 
ued in the faith throughout tempest and 
sunshine, through success and adversity. He 
was a delegate to the Baltimore convention 
that nominated Horace Greeley, in 1872, and in 
1884 was a delegate to the Chicago convention 
that nominated Cleveland and Hendricks and 
was a member of the committee that made a 
platform of principles which the voters of the 
country endorsed at the November election fol- 
lowing. In 1885, and again in 1894. he was 
appointed, by President Cleveland, postmaster 
of Mankato, the only Federal office he has ever 
held. Mr. Wise was married in September, 
L857, at Clear Spring, Washington county, 
Maryland, to Miss Amanda Flory, a daughter 
of Daniel Flory, a merchant and hotel keeper 
of Clear Spring. Mrs. Wise died in Mankato, 
in January. 1885. Mr. Wise's family consists 
of five children. His two sons. Charles E. and 
John C. Jr., are connected with their father in 
tlie publication of the Daily and Weekly Re- 
view. His daughters are: Katherine. now 
Mrs. Edgar Weaver; Nellie E., living at the 
faiuilv home; and Florv, a teacher in Duluth. 



JABEZ A. BRANT. 



Like many of those who have attained to 
prominence in the business world, Jabez An- 
derson Brant, of Minneapolis, was born 
on a farm and had seventeen years of farm 
life before commencing the more varied 
and hazardous ventures thai make or mar 
the furl unes of men. He was born at 
Berlin. Pennsylvania, September 4, 1845. His 




The, Wntuty PubUshaup A Cm/mvmj Co Clucaya- 





BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



297 



father, John J. Brant, was also a native of the 
Keystone State, born August 15, 1818, and 
alternated between the farm and the store, 
leaving at times the pursuit of agriculture for 
ventures in merchandising. He left his native 
State,in ISO", and removed to Illinois to engage 
in farming, and died December 28, 1SS7. Jabez 
A. Brant's early educational advantages were 
such as are commonly given by the public 
schools of Pennsylvania, supplemented by pri- 
vate schools at his home and in Maryland, 
where he fitted himself for teaching. As teach- 
er and student, he attained a good education, 
with which he commenced his business life. 
In 1807 and 1808 he was engaged in mercantile 
business at Lonaconing, Maryland. The follow- 
ing year lie went to Illinois, where for one year 
he resumed his vocation as feather. In the 
fall of 180!) inducements were offered him to 
engage in the insurance business, to which he 
was well adapted. He then located at Pleasant 
Hill, Missouri. After four years of successful 
work he changed his location, in 1873, to Ot- 
tawa, Kansas, and subsequently to Dubuque, 
Iowa He developed rapidly in the business. 
His judgment was respected, and his capacity 
for field work and as an adjuster were recog- 
nized by the higher officials. His quick percep- 
tion of the varied hazards and the application 
of equitable ratings was appreciated, and his 
service became desirable. He was placed in 
full charge of an inspection and rating bureau 
at Dubuque, in January. 1884, which covered 
a large district in northeastern Iowa and north- 
ern Illinois. He continued in this service until 
January, 1893, when lie was appointed to a 
supervisorship that controlled the special in- 
ti rests of companies at Milwaukee. Wisconsin. 
After completing his work under this special 
charge with gratifying success, he removed to 
Minneapolis, called there by an appointment 
as manager and inspector for the Minneapolis 
Underwriters' Association, with headquarters 
in the New York Life building in that city. 
During the War of the Rebellion Mr. Brant 
was assigned to duty as a civilian in the ca- 
pacity of an engineer, attached to the Fifteenth 
New York Regiment of Engineers. Mr. Brant 
was married to Miss Minnie J. Clothier of New 



York at Carthage, Missouri, on May 20, 1892. 
He is a member of the Minneapolis Mounted 
Commandery, No. 28, Knights Templar; Zurah 
Temple of the Mystic Shrine; is a thirty-second 
degree Mason, and has membership in the Com- 
mercial Club of Minneapolis. Mr. and Mrs. 
Brant worship in the Westminster Presbyte- 
rian church. Mr. Brant, in the discharge of 
the duties assigned to him, has traveled exten- 
sively in the West, and has made a large and 
valued acquaintance. In politics he has always 
been a Republican, and he takes a lively inter- 
est in the affairs that mark the progress and 
prosperity of the community in which he re- 
sides, and bears with an inspiring cheerfulness 
his full share of the public burdens. In a vig- 
orous manhood, and with a thorough knowl- 
edge of all the intricate questions pertaining 
to insurance, he is well fitted for a life of use- 
fulness and prosperity. His chosen field in the 
business of insurance is full of opportunity for 
tlie employment of business ability and sterling 
integrity that characterize his life. 



ROBERT H. PATTERSON. 

Robert H Patterson, a prominent business 
man of Minneapolis, was the sixth of a family 
of eight children, five of whom are living. He 
is a native of the State of Ohio, and was born 
in the city of Athens, in the county of the same 
name. His father, John Patterson, was born 
in the year 180!), in Washington county, Penn- 
sylvania, and lived to the age of sixty-five 
years, dying in 1874. The education of Robert 
was begun in the public schools of Ohio. He 
was able to go to school during the winter sea 
son only, being employed at farming in the 
summer. Later he was enabled to enter an 
academy in his native town, where he attended 
two terms. He then entered the Ohio Univer- 
sity at Athens, attending that institution for 
one year. Aftei completing his studies, he vis- 
ited what was then the West — Illinois and 
Iowa. He taught school for a year and a half 
in Towa. but his tastes inclined him to a com 
mercial life, and accordingly, in 1870. lie went 
to work in the capacity of an employe under 



298 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



his brother, who had organized a wholesale 

boot and shot' house at Chillicothe, Ohio, under 
the firm name of .Miller. Patterson & Company. 
He remained with this house for eighl years, 
beginning with the modest salary of fifty dol- 
lars per month, and gradually working up. By 
virtue of his natural thrift and economical hah 
its, he succeeded in saving during that time the 
sum of $5,000. With this hard earned accumu- 
lation he organized a hat and cap business in 
the same town, taking in a partner. He con- 
tinued in this business for about six years, 
when he sold out and removed to Minneapolis, 
in February. 1884. He took in as a partner 
James Chestnut, and established a business at 
No. 204 Nicollet avenue. In 1887 Mr. Chestnut 
sold out his interest in the firm to a Mr. Dick 
iuson, who came from Cincinnati. Ohio. Mr. 
Patterson continued in partnership with Mr. 
Dickinson for four years, when he again 
changed partners, Mr. Dickinson giving place 
to Mr. Stevenson, with whom he has been asso- 
ciated ever since, under the firm name of Pat- 
terson & Stevenson. They have built up an 
enormous trade in hats, caps, gloves and furs. 
their house having the reputation of being one 
of the largesl jobbing hat and cap firms in the 
Northwest. A large measure of Mr. Patter- 
son's success is due to the fact thai he is a man 
of systematic habits in business, having a 
place for everything and keeping everything 
in its place. As a result of his methodical hab- 
its, the smallest details of his business are not 
neglected, but receive their due attention. He 
is a modest, unassuming gentleman, not given 
to ostentation. He has a warm place in the 
hearts of his numerous friends, many of whom 
have been on intimate terms with him. either 
in business or social relations, for many years. 
Mr. Patterson has been twice married. His 
first wife, to whom he was united June 15, 
lS7."i. was Miss Estelle De Voss. of Greenfield, 
Ohio. She passed away July 4. 1884. On May 
15, 1890. he was married to Miss Lavenia De 
Voss, also of Greenfield. Mr. and Mrs. Patter- 
son reside on Park avenue, where they take 
pleasure in entertaining their many friends. 
In politics Mr. Patterson affiliates with the Re- 
publicans, although he has never sought any 



political position, lie has been a member of 
the Westminster Presbyterian church, Minne- 
apolis, for fifteen years; also a member of the 
Commercial Club and Board of Trade. 



JOSEPn R. \Y ATKINS. 

Joseph Ray Watkins, of Winona, comes from 
a family of Welsh descent which has lived in 
America for more than two hundred years. 
The great-grandfather, Tobias Watkins, was 
born in New Jersey in the early part of the 
Eighteenth Century, and during the Revolu- 
tionary War took contracts for furnishing beef 
to the army. James Watkins, the grandfather 
of the subject of this sketch, was also a native 
of New Jersey. In 1800 he made the journey 
westward with an ox-team, crossed the moun- 
tains of Pennsylvania, and became one of 
those sturdy pioneers who opened up the 
greal State of Ohio, lie was one of the tirst 
settlers in the western part of the State, and 
located on what was known as the Sims' pur- 
chase, at a point then called Fort Washington, 
where the city of Cincinnati now stands. He 
look an active part in the development of that 
region. By trade he was a blacksmith, and 
brought from New Jersey the first nail cutting 
machine taken west of the Allegheny moun- 
tains, in Pennsylvania. The anvil of .lames 
Watkins is still in the family, and will be 
handed down to future generations. -1. R. Wat 
kins was born at Cincinnati, August 21, 1S40. 
the son of the Rev. Benjamin Utter ami 
Sophronia (Keeler) Watkins. The father con 
tinned his ministerial life in Ohio until 1862, 
when he came to Minnesota, where he re- 
sided nearly twenty years. Me then moved 
to the State of Missouri, where he died. The 
mother was born on the shore of Lake Cham- 
plain, and came of a family that settled in the 
northern part of the Empire State during 
pioneer days. The subject of this sketch was 
reared in the State of his nativity and was 
educated at College Hill. Ohio. In 1862 he 
accompanied his father's family to Minnesota, 
and became a resident of Stearns county, 
where soon after they were subject to many 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



299 



hardships brought on by the Indian War. Mr. 
Wat kins was married in 1868 to Miss Mary 
Ellen Heberling, a native of Ohio. They have 
one daughter, Grace Eleanore. In 1868 Mr. 
Wat kins secured from Richard Ward, of Cin- 
cinnati, the right to manufacture and sell his 
remedies, and later bought out Mr. Ward's 
entire business. This was the beginning of 
what has proven to be one of the largest medi- 
cine and extract business houses in the United 
States. Starting with comparatively small re- 
sources, Mr. Watkins has, through persistent 
effort and aggressive business methods, in- 
n-eased the dimensions of his business to such 
a degree that he now has a traveling force of 
two hundred aud fifty men, probably selling 
more goods at retail in this line than any con- 
cern in the country. Mr. Watkins has been a 
resident of Winona since 1S85. In 18!)0, in order 
to meet the demands of his increasing trade, 
he erected a large, substantial brick building, 
and in the spring of 1894 completed an addition 
larger than the original building, complete in 
all its appointments, forming one of the best 
equipped laboratories to be found anywhere. 
The organization of which he is the head, now 
bears the name of J. R. Watkins Medical Com- 
pany, with a capital stock of five hundred thou- 
sand dollars. While Mr. Watkins has never 
been active in a public capacity, he is a man 
who is always alive to the interests of the com- 
munity. He has just given evidence of his 
faith in (lie future growth and development 
of Winona by the investment of large sums of 
money in various enterprises. Most laudable 
among these was his establishment, two years 
ago, of the Winona Morning Independent. At 
that time Winona was one of only three cities 
of its size in the United States that had no 
morning paper, and Mr. Watkins, recognizing 
the demands of the community, especially for 
war news at that time, and its unusually broad 
held, invested large sums of money in provid- 
ing an equipment that is modern and complete 
in every respect, including web-perfecting 
press, type-setting machines, stereotyping out- 
fits, etc., with which to carry on the work. 
This has resulted in the building up of the 
largest daily newspaper in southern Minnesota, 



its circulation covering the city of Winona 
fully, and reaching some sixty adjoining cities, 
towns and villages. 



MARSHALL B. WEBBER. 

The life history of Marshall Bailey Web- 
ber, of Winona, which covers nearly half 
a century, belongs in nearly equal portions 
to the two neighbor States of Wiscon- 
sin and Minnesota. By birth, education 
and experience, he is a true son of the 
Northwest; but genealogical records show 
him to be connected, through a long line of 
New Englanders, with a remote ancestry in the 
mother country. Early Webbers, crossing to 
011 1- shores, figured in the colonial history of 
.Massachusetts, and both the grandfather and 
father of Marshall B. were natives of the old 
Bay State. The grandfather, Loren Webber, 
was a Baptist of the strictest Puritan type, 
and governed his household in consistency with 
his faith. His son Samuel, father of our sub- 
ject, was born July 11, 1822, in Holland, Hamp- 
ton county, Massachusetts, grew to manhood 
in his native State, and was for three years 
employed in a cotton factory in the town of 
Sturbridge. In 1837 he came to Wiscon- 
sin with his father, who then secured a 
large tract of Government land for farming 
purposes. They settled upon it, in Raymond 
township, Racine county, and for years father 
and son labored together upon the virgin soil. 
January 1, 1885, the senior Webber died, 
at the extreme age of ninety-four years. The 
maternal grandfather of Marshall B. Webber 
was Jonathan Bailey, a New Hampshire farm- 
er and school-teacher, who figured as an ardent 
Whig in the early politics of the Granite State. 
In 1841 he, also, emigrated to Racine county, 
Wisconsin, with his family, which consisted of 
a wife and four children. On October 2, 
L842, one of these children, Sabra Amelia 
Bailey, was married to Samuel Webber, and on 
August 2, 1850, the subject of this sketch was 
born. Marshall B. Webber lived, to the age 
of eighteen, upon the home farm, which was 
a section of the original tract taken up by his 



300 



MIOCRAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



grandfather, and which was cultivated by his 
father until recent years. Samuel Webber, 
who now lives in Racine, Wisconsin, is the 
oldest resident of his county, and widely 
known as an influential and public-spirited cit- 
izen. Marshall B. acquired an elementary 
education in his native town of Raymond, 
which he later supplemented by a high school 
course at Racine. After finishing at the high 
school, he did two years of preparatory work 
in a private seminary, then went to Michigan 
and matriculated at Hillsdale College. He 
graduated from that institution in 1S75, and 
in the following autumn came to live in Wi- 
nona, Minnesota. He entered the office of Hon. 
W. II. Yale as a student, and after reading law 
for about two years was admitted, in the fall 
of 1877, to the bar of Winona county. He 
became associated in a partnership with Gov- 
ernor Yale, which was discontinued two years 
later on the election of Mr. Webber to the 
office of prosecuting State's attorney. After 
the expiration of his two years' term of service 
as prosecuting attorney, he pursued an inde- 
pendent practice until 1895, in the autumn of 
which year he entered into partnership with 
Edward Lees, thus forming the present well- 
known firm of Webber & Lees. Mr. Webber's 
professional career has, from its beginning, 
been characterized by a gratifying freedom 
from reverses. Alike in his partnerships and 
as an individual practitioner, he has prospered, 
not in any phenomenal way, but by "slow and 
sure" progression, until to-day he is recognized 
by the city of Winona as one of the leading 
members of her bar and the State. For many 
years he has played a prominent part in the 
litigation of the great bulk of important civil 
causes in southern Minnesota, and as a trial 
lawyer in cases of a corporate character he 
has had large experience and signal success. 
Mr. Webber is at present counsel for both the 
Milwaukee & St. Paul and the Chicago, Bur- 
lington & Quincy railroads. In politics, al- 
though never controlled solely by partisan 
sentiment, Mr. Webber has been always identi- 
fied with the Republican party. He has no 
political history in the sense of office holding, 
but has always held a prominent place in the 



councils of his party, being for several years 
a member of the State Central Committee. His 
time and energies have been very largely ab- 
sorbed by his professional work. He belongs 
to the order of Knights of Pythias, and has 
occupied all the chairs of Winona Lodge No. 
21, of which he is one of the oldest members, 
lie belongs, also, to the order of the Good 
Samaritan, and is a member of the Meadow 
Brook Golf Club, and interested in healthy 
athletic sports of all kinds. On January 2, 
1879, Mr. Webber was married to Miss Allies 
M. Robertson, of Hillsdale, Michigan. Mr. and 
.Mis. Webber are regular attendants at St. 
Paul's Episcopal church of Winona, prominent 
in social circles, and both in church-directed 
philanthropy and in secular enterprise Mr. 
Webber is loyal in his support of worthy and 
progressive measures. 



REUBEN REYNOLDS. 

The late Judge Reuben Reynolds, of 
Crookston, was a native of New York 
State, born at Covington, Gonessee county, 
April 25, 1821. He was educated in the 
Empire State, and prepared for the minis- 
try, being ordained in the Methodist-Epis- 
copal faith. Subsequently, however, he 
preached for a number of years as an Uni- 
tarian. His residence in .Minnesota dates from 
IS."."), in which year he came to the State and 
located at Rochester, having meantime relin- 
quished the clerical in favor of the legal pro- 
fession. He resided in Rochester for fifteen 
years, during which time he served one term 
as clerk of the District Court and two terms 
as judge of the Probate Court of Olmstead 
county. During the Civil War he held, also, 
a public office connected with that of the pro- 
vost marshal. In 1870 he came to northern 
Minnesota, locating at Alexandria, where he 
became associated in legal practice with Hon. 
Knute Nelson. In 1872 he took up his resi- 
dence in Detroit, Becker county, having pre- 
viously, and after leaving Alexandria, lived 
for a short time in Otter Tail county. In De 1 
troit, where he remained for four years, he 



m~ 





>^2-< 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



301 



tilled the post of receiver in the local United 
States land office. From Detroit he removed 
to Minneapolis, where he practiced his profes- 
sion as one of the members of a law partner- 
ship, doing duty, also, as special judge of the 
municipal court. In 1879, having received from 
Judge Stearns the appointment of clerk of 
court for Folk county, he settled in Orookston, 
where lie resided continuously for the remain- 
der of his life. In connection with William 
M. Walts, Esq., Judge Reynolds practiced his 
profession for four years at Orookston, partici- 
pating, it is said, in the trial of the first case 
ever decided by a District Oourt in the county. 
As soon as an associate justice was permitted 
for the district, he was appointed to that office, 
in which he was still serving when attacked 
by the painful disorder which eventually ended 
his life. His death occurred on March 8, 1889, 
after ten years of residence in Orookston. He 
was sixty-eight years of age at the time of his 
decease, and was lamented by the community 
at huge, having been much appreciated for the 
abilities and virtues made manifest in every 
department of his active life. Always a loyal 
Republican, Judge Reynolds was a zealous and 
efficient campaigner during the many years of 
his residence in Minnesota. At the time of the 
Ku Klux "reign of terror" in Arkansas, the 
Judge, undaunted, pursued his stump work for 
General Grant even into the most perilous 
localities. He possessed the gift of ready 
speech, his style being simple and direct, but 
forceful and most convincing. To his tireless 
efforts, Hon. Knute Nelson, United States Sen- 
ator from Minnesota, was largely indebted for 
his first election to Congress, Judge Reynolds 
being, in his case, actuated less by party senti- 
ment than sincere regard for the character of 
the man. In behalf of early settlers in Polk 
county. Judge Reynolds labored disinterestedly 
in the matter of land indemnity; and to the 
cause of temperance, always and everywhere, 
he was a consecrated devotee. Judge Reynolds 
was eminently adapted to the judicial fund ion 
by the very order of his mentality, which was 
far-seeing, cautious, discriminating. He was 
an excellent judge; but he was more and bet- 
ter than a judge; he was a man of high ideals 



and earnest and true convictions. He lived 
upon a high plane, toiling for the good of the 
State, the Nation and humanity. In the year 
1844, at La Monte, Michigan, Reuben Reynolds 
was married to Lucia A. Tucker, of Vermont. 
Eight children were born of their union, four 
of whom are now living. The two daughters 
are: Mrs. L. D. Daggett of San Antonio, Texas, 
and Mrs. Minnie Ellis, who resides in Califor- 
nia. The two sons are George H. and Fred, 
both lawyers, the former at St. Cloud, the lat- 
ter at Duluth, Minnesota. 



JAMES GILFILLAN. 

The Hon. James Gilfillan, for twenty years 
Thief Justice of the Supreme Court of Minne- 
sota, was born at Bannockburn, in Sterling- 
shire, Scotland, March 9, 1829, and died, at 
his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, December 1G, 
1894. W^hile he was yet an infant his parents 
removed to the United States and he was 
reared to young manhood in Oneida county, 
New York. He studied law in Chenango coun- 
ty, and at the law school of Rallston Spa, and 
was admitted to the bar at Albany, in Decem- 
ber, 1850. He then went to Buffalo, and con- 
tinued a course of legal study and training for 
some time, so that he did not begin the active 
practice of his chosen profession until 1853. 
lie attained to his profession by hard work 
and under adverse circumstances. Early in 
young manhood he learned the trade of car- 
riage painter, in which he became very profi- 
cient. He even produced some very creditable 
specimens of portrait work. The money that 
enabled him to complete his law studies was 
earned by painting pianos. In 1S57 he settled 
in St. Paul, opened a law office, and formed 
a partnership with his brother, Hon. Charles 
D. Gilfillan, and soon had a remunerative prac- 
tice. The War of the Rebellion dissolved the 
partnership. In August, 1862, he enlisted in 
the Onion army, and September 1, following, 
lie was commissioned captain of Company H, 
Seventh Minnesota Infantry. The first year of 
his military experience was spent in service 
against the Indians, under General Sibley. He 



302 



P.IOORAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



was in the battle of Wood lake, and in the bat- 
tles of the Sibley expedition into Dakota in 
1868. Going South with his regiment in the 
fall of 1863, he was in active service in Mis- 
souri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, 
until September 7, ism, when he was commis- 
sioned colonel of the Eleventh Minnesota In 
fantry. He was in command of his regiment 
in Tennessee from November, 1864, until June 
26, 1865, when, the war having closed, he was 
mustered out. He was an excellent officer — not 
showy or demonstrative, but always cool and 
collected, intelligent and faithful in the per- 
formance of his duty, and of calm, sturdy, and 
unshaken courage. After the close of the war 
he returned to St. Paul and resumed the prac- 
tice of his profession. In July, 1869, a vacancy 
on the Supreme Bench having been created by 
the resignation of Chief Justice Thomas Wil 
son, Governor Marshall, his former regimental 
commander in the Seventh Minnesota, ap- 
pointed him to the position, which he held until 
January, 1870. In March, L875, Chief Jus- 
tice McMillin (who had been elected United 
States Senator) resigned, and Judge Gilfillan 
was again appointed to the vacancy, this time 
by Governor Davis. In November following 
he was elected by the people, and he served, 
by re-election, continuously until his death, in 
December, 1894. He was a jurist of a very 
high order, profound in his knowledge of the 
law and clear in its exposition. His opinions 
and decisions, voluminous as they are, cover 
the held of jurisprudence and are regarded as 
fully exhaustive and cpioted as highly authori- 
tative on the questions decided. Like their 
author, they are dignified, yet plain; positive, 
but fair; established by reason, and grounded 
in justice. Upon his death the public press 
teemed with tributes to his memory. One of 
his friends, a former judge of the Supreme 
Court, wrote: 

"In the death of Chief Justice James Gil- 
fillan the bench of Minnesota loses its most 
impressive figure, the State its most distin- 
guished jurist. He was a lawyer of sound and 
accurate learning, of excellent judgment, of un- 
questioned probity. His talents were those of 
a safe adviser and counselor rather than of a 



successful advocate. Hence he was regarded, 
by those who knew him best, as specially 
fitted for the bench, for the duties of which 
he was thoroughly equipped, both by tempera- 
ment and experience. He came West in the 
early migration of young Eastern men, who 
believed in the future of the new world. It 
never occurred to him that wide culture and 
high character would be out of place in the 
young and vigorous communities that were to 
transform the prairie wildernesses into splen- 
did Commonwealths. He never found books and 
scholarship alien to tin 1 region in which indus- 
trial and commercial activity were the chief oc- 
cupations of a struggling and eager people; 
nor a high sense of moral obligation and public 
duty incompatible with the legal profession. 
Promoted to the Supreme Bench by Governor 
Marshall, he served a generation of men, ably, 
wisely, honestly, and had he survived a few 
weeks longer, would have retired from public 
life through the expiration of his term, leaving 
a noble record and example for all who shall 
come after him. Keen, clear, rigorous, Judge 
Gilfillan was always courteous, considerate, 
and, above all, just. Neither politics nor per- 
sonal considerations ever influenced his judi- 
cial conduct, nor was he ever swayed by any 
private inducement in the performance of his 
public duties. Clamor would have disturbed 
him less than the passing wind. Favoritism 
was alien to his presence. No one could pre- 
dict in advance of testimony what his decision 
would be; the presence of this or that attorney 
in a case was not tantamount to a judgment. 
He had no personal interests to promote out- 
side his court or by collusion or understanding 
within it. 

The lesson which Judge Giltillan's life 
teaches is that character is the greatest human 
achievement. It is a larger fact than genius, 
and about as rare a phenomenon as greatness, 
and neither are as common factors in busi- 
ness and professional life as they ought to be. 
In the best and truest sense Judge Gilfillan was 
a man of character. What he was he became 
by the inherent force of his own manhood. 
* * * It were worthy of the highest cour- 
age, the extremest sacrifice, the uttermost de- 
votion to high ideals to win and leave behind 
the distinction, the fair name and high repute 
of a Gilfillan." 

After the death of the old Whig party Judge 
Gilfillan was always a Republican in politics, 
but never an active partisan. Personally he 
was of quiet and unassuming manners, and the 
nobilities of his character were only to be 



IWOOKAl'llY OF MINNESOTA. 



303 



learned by personal contact with him. Those 
who knew him best esteemed him most. He 
was a consistent member of the Episcopal 
church, belonged to the military order of the 
Loyal Legion, and he had a host of personal 
admirers and friends. Judge Gilfillan was mar 
ried June 4, 1867, to Miss Martha McMasters, 
daughter of Rev. Dr. S. V. McMasters, an emi- 
nent divine and scholar, who was at one time 
rector of Christ Episcopal church of St. Paul, 
and who died in 1875. By this marriage there 
were seven children, viz.: James S. ; Kather 
ine, now Mrs. Samuel Gilbert, of New York; 
Mary, now residing in New York; Caroline, 
now Mrs. Trevor McClurg, of St. Paul; Perry, 
Martha and Russell. The last named is de- 
ceased. 



Judge ('ant is a Republican. lie is a member 
of the Masonic fraternity, of the Knights of 
Pythias, and of the Royal Arcanum. He was 
married at Minneapolis, September 7, 1886, to 
Miss Carrie E. Graham. They have live chil- 
dren. 



WILLIAM A. CANT. 

Judge William Alexander Cant, of Duluth, 
is a native of Wisconsin, and was born at West- 
field, Marquette county, December l':!, 1863. 
Both his parents were natives of Scotland. 
They had but two children, and the subject 
hereof was the elder. John Cant, his father, 
was by vocation a farmer, and followed this 
pursuit during the greater part of his life, dy- 
ing in 1868. The early education of Judge < "ant 
was mainly acquired in the public schools of 
his native town. At the age of seventeen he 
left home and came to Minnesota. He entered 
the State Normal School at St. Cloud and was 
graduated from that institution in 1883. After 
leaving school he began the study of law. At 
the conclusion of a two years' course he was 
graduated from the Law Department of the 
University of Michigan, and the same year was 
admitted to the bar. He began the practice of 
his profession in Duluth in 1886. In 1894 he 
was elected to the Legislature as a Represen- 
tative from the Fifty fourth Legislative Dis- 
trict, comprising the counties of St. Louis, Lake 
and Cook, and served in the legislative session 
of 1895. Later in the latter year he was ap- 
pointed city attorney of the city of Duluth. In 
1896 he was elected to his present position, 
that of Judge of the District Court. In politics 



HENRY' Z. MITCHELL. 

Among the choice pioneer spirits of the city 
of St. Cloud, and of Stearns county, the late 
Gen. H. Z. Mitchell will long be a cherished 
personality in the memory and tradition of his 
surviving fellow citizens. Coming to Minne- 
sota in the full strength of his prime, well 
equipped with education, business ability, and 
experience in public affairs, he was at once 
felt to be a valuable acquisition to the youth- 
ful community in which he had decided to 
make his home; and after forty years of sym- 
pathetic and productive activity in its midst, 
his removal by death was necessarily felt as a 
calamity, even though he had survived the al- 
lotted age of man by nearly half a score of 
years. Henry Zearing Mitchell was born at 
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, November 30, 1816, 
the son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Zearing) 
Mitchell. His father was born in 178::, in 
County Tyrone, Ireland, but came, when a boy, 
to this country with his widowed mother, who 
settled in Pennsylvania. Joseph Mitchell died 
near Harrisburg. in that State, in the year 
1832. Elizabeth Zearing was a native of Penn- 
sylvania, born in Lebanon county in 1789. Her 
marriage to Joseph Mitchell occurred in 1808; 
her death in 1859. She was a granddaughter 
of John Joseph Rupp, who, in 1751, emigrated 
to Pennsylvania from the Grand Duchy of Ba- 
den, Germany. Her father, Henry Zearing — 
of whom tile subject of this sketch is the name 
sake — fought in the Revolutionary War under 
General Washington, having enlisted at the 
age of sixteen. The childhood and early youth 
of our subject were passed in the locality of 
his birth, where he received what was at that 
time counted a very liberal education. At the 
age of twenty he went to live at Pittsburgh, 
where he entered into business of a mercantile 



304 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



character. But he had an order of mind which 
could not be absorbed by mere business, and 
developed an interest in politics and the public 
weal, which drew him, at an early age, into 
the political arena; and the twenty years spent 
in western Pennsylvania were busy and profit- 
able ones, lie f i 1st came to .Minnesota in L856 
to look over the Territory with a view to set 
tling within it. Impressed with the possibili- 
ties of the region, he returned to his family — 
having been married during his residence at 
Pittsburgh — and early in 1S">7 returned with 
them, and a stock of general merchandise, to 
his chosen location at St. Cloud. He procured 
a store building, on Tenth street, for his goods, 
and soon found himself established in business. 
A little later he took up a pre-emption claim 
near Rockville, Minnesota, on the shore of 
Grand lake, continuing his family residence. 
however, at St. Cloud. In tin' following years 
lie made two changes in his business location 
at St. Cloud, the first being to a double store 
building, one side of which was occupied by 
the firm of Miller & Swisshelm, and where Mr. 
Mitchell began dealing in both dry goods and 
clothing. The second change was to the cor- 
ner of Third street and Fiftlt avenue, where 
he conducted a prosperous business for many 
years. While here, he was appointed, by Presi- 
dent Lincoln, postmaster of St. Cloud, and 
served with ability and faithfulness until sup 
planted, for political reasons, upon the acces- 
sion of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency. 
In 1862, at the time of the Indian uprising in 
the Northwest, Mr. Mitchell received from Al- 
exander Ramsey — the first constitutional Gov- 
ernor of Minnesota, and an old-time friend of 
our subject — the appointment as Commissary 
General of the State; and by the title of "Gen- 
eral," thus acquired, he was familiarly known 
during the remainder of his life. In 1892 he 
disposed of his business to his son, Charles S. 
Mitchell, and W. S. Elliott, and retired from 
the activities of commercial life, having earned 
by long years of industry a competency suffi- 
cient for future needs. From the time of his 
coming to St. Cloud to the date of his retire- 
ment, he had been constantly engaged in mer- 
cantile pursuits, excepting for two brief pe- 



riods, namely: one in winch he held the posi- 
tion of salesman for the late Major Murphy, 
and the other in which he served under Re- 
ceiver Burbank in the local United States land 
office. But retirement meant to General 
Mitchell, not, as to so many, the beginning of 
a monotonous and dreary senility, but rather 
leisure in which to cultivate his literary and 
social tastes. He spent many of his later hours 
in reading, and having a large acquaintance, 
including many fellow pioneers, the scene of 
his former business operations on Fifth avenue 
continued as a rendezvous where congenial 
spirits met to exchange with him reminiscences 
of frontier life. In 1841 Mr. Mitchell was mar- 
ried at YVilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, to Eliza- 
beth A. Cannon, of Pittsburgh. The ancestors 
of Elizabeth Cannon were Scotch-Irish Cove- 
nanters, that devoted sect which suffered so 
many privations and persecutions for the sake 
of its religious faith. Elizabeth and her only 
sister, who, as Mrs. Jane Gray Swisshelm, be- 
came very prominent as a journalist in both 
Pennsylvania and Minnesota during anti- 
slavery days, were descendants, on their 
mother's side, of Lady Jane Grey, for nine 
days Queen of England. Eight children were 
burn to Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, four of whom. 
together with their mother, survive the Gen- 
eral, who passed away on March fi. 1896. The 
two sons an- William 1!., of St. Cloud, and 
Charles S., now of Alexandria, and the two 
daughters, Mrs. Henry C. Burbank, of St. Paul, 
and Mrs. Jean G. Walton, of Cincinnati, Ohio. 
General Mitchell was a life-long member, and 
for many years an elder, of the Presbyterian 
church. 



DANIEL A. MORRISON. 

Daniel Alexander Morrison, of Rochester. 
ex-State Senator from Olmstead county, 
is a son of Ananias and Mary Gaston 
Morrison, and was born in Franklin, Ve- 
nango county, Pennsylvania, November 8, 
1842. He is of Scotch-Irish descent. His 
grandfather, John Gaston, died from a wound 
received in the second war with England. 
Both of Daniel's patents were born in Penn- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



305 



sylvania, but removed to Elmira, New York, 
in 1840. In 1852 the family came West and 
settled at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where the 
sen received a common school education and 
also learned the printer's trade. In 1859-60 he 
.published the "Journal" at Markesan, Green 
Lake county, Wisconsin, which was the first 
enterprise of the kind in that town. This was 
before he was eighteen years of age. In 1862 
Mr. Morrison enlisted in the Thirty-second Wis 
cousin Infantry, and served until the close of 
the war. In March, 1X60, lie came to Rochester 
and engaged in the mercantile trade. His 
business tact and executive ability were soon 
recognized, and demands were made upon him 
to participate in the administration of public 
a Hairs. He has been three limes Mayor of the 
city, and was elected to the State Senate in 
1878. While a member of that body he served 
on several important committees, such as hos- 
pital for the insane, State library, engrossing, 
and internal improvements, and was chairman 
of the last-named committee. He introduced 
and carried through the bill locating the sec- 
ond Insane Hospital at Rochester. During the 
temporary occupancy of the Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor's chair, at which time he presided over 
the Senate, the famous dead-lock over the high 
license bill was broken, and Senator Morrison 
gained fame and distinction as a presiding 
officer. He was re-elected in the fall of 1878. 
For thirty years and more Mr. Morrison has 
lived in Rochester, and during that time few 
have been more actively and prominently con- 
nected with her varied interests. His long and 
creditable career in the State Senate con- 
tributed in no small degree to the prominence 
Rochester and this section of Minnesota has 
maintained, and the honors conferred upon the 
soldier-statesman have been worthily be- 
stowed. Mr. Morrison has always been a Re- 
publican. He is a master Mason, and at one 
time was Grand Master of the Odd Fellows of 
the State. In July, 1865, he was married to 
Miss Sarah M. Beeton, of Rochester. They 
have had four children, three of whom survive 
— Leulla A., now Mrs. H. C. Stedman; Arthur 
L., and Minnie. Edwin, the oldest, died in 
infancy. 



ALBERT C. WEDGE. 

Albert Clark Wedge, M. D., of Albert Lea, 
pioneer settler, and for the past forty- 
three years the leading physician of Free- 
born county, Minnesota, was born in Lew- 
is county, New York, August IX, 1834, the 
son of Albert and Elizabeth (Clark) Wedge. 
He is descended from a family of old 
Puritan stock, prominent in the early history 
of New England. Thomas Wedge, the founder 
of the family in America, settled in Litchfield, 
Connecticut, about the year 1635, and five of 
his grandsons were patriot soldiers in the war 
for Independence. The Doctor's grandfather. 
Solomon Wedge, emigrated to New York Stale 
at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, 
and settled on a farm in Lewis county. He 
was a member of the New York State Militia 
and took part in the war of 1X12. His sister 
married William Grant, of Litchfield, Connecti- 
cut, a member of the family of the ancestors 
of Gen. IT. S. Grant, and, in 1835, their son, 
Asahel Wedge Grant, was the first to respond 
to the call of the Congregational Society of 
Foreign Missions for medical missionaries to 
the Nestorians of Persia. He spent several 
years -in missionary work in Asia, and died 
at Mosul, Turkey, where he lies buried by r the 
River Tigris, near the site of ancient Nineveh. 
Albert Wedge, the father of Dr. A. ('. 
Wedge, was born in Connecticut, in 1808, of a 
family of eight children. He was educated for 
the ministry al Hamilton College, New York, 
and in 183!) removed with his family to South- 
ern Ohio, where he was engaged in missionary 
work. His wife died at Hillsboro, Ohio, in 1840, 
when his son Albert C. was only six years old. 
In 1X47, after eight years' service in Ohio, the 
father removed with his five children to Pen- 
dleton, Madison county, Indiana, where he re- 
mained for three years. He then went on a 
visit to Fond du Lac county, Wisconsin, where 
his father and brothers were then residents, at 
a place called Wedge Prairie. Here he died 
in 1X51, and, with his wife, now rests in the 
family burying ground at that place. After 
the father's death the family, then living in 
Indiana, was broken up, and Albert went to 



306 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Wedge Prairie, to live with his uncle. He at- 
tended the eoinmon schools, worked on his 
uncle's farm and taught country school, in 
1854 he entered Ripon College, as a student, 
and remained there for three years, after which 
he studied medicine with Dr. J. Rodgers at 
Ripon, and later attended the Cleveland (Ohio) 
Medical College, from which institution he 
graduated in February, 1S57. After gradua- 
tion he returned to Wisconsin, expecting to 
locate in Ripon and practice his chosen pro- 
fession with his preceptor, but one of his 
uncles, Lucian P. Wedge, had been to Minne- 
sota and acquired property at Albert Lea. 
Through his uncle's persuasion the young phy- 
sician concluded to locate in Minnesota. His 
uncle supplied him with money, provisions, a 
span of horses and a covered wagon, and in 
May, 1857, he drove to Albert Lea, which at 
that time consisted of a cluster of four or five 
log houses, and about thirty inhabitants. Here 
he put up a frame building for an office, hung 
out his sign, and was ready to prescribe for 
any who might need his services. At first 
there was not much for him to do in a pro- 
fessional way, but he had his uncle's interests 
to look after, and he pre-empted land and took 
an active part in the building up of the young 
community. As the town prospered and the 
country settled up, his business increased, and 
for forty-three years he has continued in active 
practice, except for short periods when he has 
been engaged in public service. When the 
township was organized, in 1858, he was elected 
chairman of the first board of supervisors, and 
subsequently held the position for several 
years. Dr. Wedge was appointed, in 18f!2, as- 
sistant surgeon of the Third Regiment, Minne- 
sota Volunteer Infantry, and joined his 
regiment at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in May, 
L862. On the 13th day of July he participated 
in the battle of Murfreesboro, in which the 
regiment was surrendered to the enemy by the 
colonel in command. Dr. Wedge remained for 
a time in the hospital at Murfreesboro helping 
to care for the wounded, then went to Nash- 
ville and was on duty in the general hospital 
for several months. His regiment having been 
exchanged, he joined it again at Cairo, and 



went with it on the campaign through Ken 
lucky and Tennessee, joining General O rant's 
main army at the investment and capture of 
Vicksburg. He was also with General Steele's 
tones iii the expedition to capture Little Rock, 
and in all the battles connected with the cam 
paign in Arkansas in 1864-65 until the close 
of the war. when he was mustered out with his 
regiment in September, 18C5, at Devall's Bluff, 
Arkansas. Dr. Wedge was very efficient and 
faithful as a surgeon at all times, and had the 
fullest confidence of the officers and men to 
whom he ministered. He performed especially 
notable service for the Third Regiment during 
its stay at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in the spring 
and summer of 1864. The regiment was en- 
camped in a swampy, unhealthy locality, and 
a violent epidemic of malarial fever broke out. 
The result was as tragically disastrous as 
though the men had been engaged in battle 
every day. A large majority were stricken 
down. From May to August fully 150 died. 
The Doctor labored incessantly, and but tm 
his care and skill many more would have 
perished. He was without proper medical sup- 
plies, but did the best he could. When at last 
he was prostrated, he could not obtain even a 
dose of quinine for himself. On the 1st of 
August he was relieved from duty and re- 
turned with the six companies of re enlisted 
men to Minnesota, or perhaps he too would 
have been a victim of the fever. After his 
discharge from the army Dr. Wedge returned 
to his home in Albert Lea, and resumed his 
practice. He served in the lower house of the 
State Legislature in 1870-71, and as State 
Senator in 1879-80. He resigned the oflice of 
Senator in 1881 to take the position of collector 
of internal revenue under an appointment by 
President Garfield. In this office he served 
two years under President Arthur's adminis- 
tration. He was a member of the Republican 
National Convention of 1880 that nominated 
Garfield for President. While in the Legisla- 
ture he was chairman of the committee on 
railroads, and of the State prison investigation 
committee, and served on several other im- 
portant committees. He has always been a 
Republican in politics, and has taken an active 




cl^v ur efit^L 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



30/ 



part in all National elections, keeping well in- 
formed on local. State, and National politics. 
He was chairman of the Republican Congres- 
sional Committee of his district one year, and 
for several years chairman of the county com- 
mittee. He was a member of Governor Mer- 
riam's military staff, and also of Governor 
Nelson's, as Assistant Surgeon General. He 
was appointed by Governor McGill a member 
of the State .Medical Examining Board, on 
which he served for four years, being president 
of the hoard for one year. In 1880 he was 
president of the State Medical Society, and is 
now president of the Albert Lea Central Med 
ical Society. He is also a member of the 
American Medical Association, and of the In- 
ternational Association of Railway Surgeons, 
of which organization he has been vice-presi- 
dent, and he is the local surgeon of the Chicago, 
Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. He has been 
a frequent contributor to the scientific and 
medical journals of (he day. and to the secular 
press. Dr. Wedge has for many years been one 
of the trustees of the Albert Lea College for 
Women. He is a member of the Loyal Legion 
and of the Masonic fraternity, and is an active 
member of the board of trustees of the First 
Presbyterian church of Albert Lea. Besides 
his medical practice, Dr. Wedge lakes a greal 
interest in practical scientific farming, and is 
the owner of the "Oak Park Stock Farm," 
about one mile west of Albert Lea, where he 
gratifies his taste in that direction, and where 
he raises fine blooded stock and thoroughbred 
horses, making a specialty of shorthorn 
cattle and high grade, fine hied sheep. 
It is said of Dr. Wedge, by those who 
know him and his record, that for forty-three 
years he has followed the general practice of 
medicine and has been the leading physician of 
Albert Lea and the surrounding country. He 
has been frequently called in consultation, and 
has n wide acquaintance. His many patients 
hold him in the greatest esteem, and he is re- 
garded as a model family physician. For a 
long time in the pioneer days of Freeborn 
county he was the only practitioner in the 
county, and his professional life was very 
arduous. Often he was compelled to travel 



considerable distances in all kinds of weather 
and under trying conditions. The roads were 
then mere trails or bridle paths, and led 
through deep woods or over almost impassable 
marshes and swamp lands. The winters were 
very severe and the summers of the open 
prairies were hot. The settlements were scat 
tered and his patients were in every direction 
from his office. As time passed and the popu- 
lation increased, oilier physicians came in, but 
Dr. Wedge's services were always in demand. 
The Doctor still continues in active practice, 
but does so more from habit and devotion to 
his profession than because of his personal 
needs, for he has long been in possession of a 
large and well-earned competency. He is of 
sound mind and body, plain and frank in 
speech and manner, of strong will and pro- 
nounced individuality. In personal intercourse 
he is pleasant, quiet, courteous and dignified, 
and in his practice kind and sympathetic. 
While his professional standing is very high, 
he is universally regarded as a useful, enter- 
prising and public-spirited citizen, and is 
always ready to give fully of his means to de- 
serving charity, and his contributions to edu- 
cational institutions and church purposes are 
liberal. His bearing is modest and unaffected, 
and he is a hearty hater of shams. It is need 
less to say that upon his record of rigid in- 
tegrity there is not a single stain. Dr. Wedge 
was married October L'::, 1858, to Miss Bessie 
Blackmer, daughter of Dr. F. Blackmer, of 
Albert Lea. They have one daughter, Mary 
A. (now Mrs. M. M. Jones, of Albert Lea), and 
one grandchild, his namesake, Albert Wedge 
Jones. 



GEOKOE W. SHERWOOD. 

George W. Sherwood, pioneer and promi- 
nent business man of St. Paul, was born at 
Greenville, Greene county, New York, April 
::. IS.-,::, the son of Alfred and Jane (Begordes) 
Sherwood. The Sherwoods are of English 
descent and among the early settlers of Con- 
necticut. His mother was descended from the 
Begordes family, who were prominent and 



3 o8 



BIOGRAPHY or MINNESOTA. 



early settlers in New York City. His maternal 
grandfather served in the war of 1*1:.'. Alfred 
Sherwood was a sea-faring man in early life, 
and captain <>(' a sailing vessel. He settled in 
Greenville, New York, where he married and 
continued to reside up to the time of his death. 
George \V. received a common school educa- 
tion in his native town, and learned the car- 
penter's trade. He came to Minnesota in 1855 
and located in St. Paul, where he followed his 
trade and became a contractor and builder. In 
1S(ii' he became engaged in the construction of 
railroad bridges, in partnership with Mr. R. II. 
Fittz, and later, and for more than twenty 
years was a member of the firm of Sher- 
wood, Sutherland & Company, pile drivers, 
and builders of bridges, elevators, and 
railroad buildings. He has also been, for 
over twenty years, largely interested in the 
lumber trade at Anoka. Minnesota, in the firm 
of Reed & Sherwood, manufacturers of lumber, 
lath, shingles, sash, doors and blinds. About 
fifteen years ago he purchased 1,300 acres of 
choice land near Sheldon, Iowa, where he car- 
ried on a large slock farm, and makes a 
speciality of breeding thoroughbred horses, of 
the celebrated families of "Wilkes" and "Nut- 
wood." The Sherwood Stock Farm has become 
famous by turning out several champion rac- 
ers; among them are the trotter "Lockheart" 
and the pacer "La Belle," which have made 
world records. He also makes a specialty of 
raising short-horned cattle, and carries on gen- 
eral farming for supplying the demands of his 
stock farm. He is also president of the Union 
Hank, of Sheldon, Iowa. In the building up of 
the city of St. Paul, Mr. Sherwood has been a 
prominent factor, and it was he who drove the 
piles for the foundation of most of the large 
buildings constructed at an early day: and he 
built the first large grain elevators. In poli- 
tics he is a Republican, but has never sought 
or occupied public office. He is of a very retir- 
ing and quiet disposition, and thoroughly 
domestic in his habits; a man of the most up- 
right life and of sterling integrity, a worthy 
and respected citizen. .Mr. Sherwood was mar- 
ried December lit, 1853, to Adaline Hard, of 
Unadilla, Otsego county, New York. They are 



the parents of four children: Jennie — Mrs. E. 
L. Reed, of Anoka, Minnesota; Alvah E. — man- 
ager of the Sherwood Stock Farm, at Sheldon, 
Iowa; Addie May — wife of W. H. Sleeper, 
cashier of the Union Hank, of Sheldon, Iowa; 
and George F. — physician and surgeon, and 
proprietor of a sanitarium at Dassel, Minne- 
sota. 



WILLIAM P.. MITCHELL. 

William Bell Mitchell, who has been a resi- 
dent of St. Cloud, Minnesota, for oxer forty 
years, was born May 14. 1st::, at Wilkinsburg, 
Pennsylvania. He is the oldest son of the late 
Gen. H. /. Mitchell, a sketch of whose life and 
family history appears in another part of this 
book. His mother is Elizabeth (Cannon) 
Mitchell, a younger sister of the late Mrs. Jane 
< I. Swisshelm. who was long prominent as a 
journalist and reformer. William B. Mitchell 
attended the academy of his native town to the 
age of thirteen years, after which he took a 
one year's course in mathematics at Duff's Col- 
lege, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He then, in 
the spring of L857, came to St. Cloud. Minne- 
sota, with his parents, and for a time continued 
his studies in a private school at his new home. 
At sixteen, he assisted, as chairman, in the 
survey of a State road from St. Cloud to the 
Red River of the North, at Breckinridge. This 
road, which, throughout its course, runs near 
the Great Northern Railroad's line to the 
Pacific coast, became and is still the main 
thoroughfare between the two points men- 
tioned. In this work young Mitchell earned 
his first dollar, which was carefully treasured 
for future investment. Shortly afterwards he 
began working in the printing office of the St. 
Cloud Visitor, thus being enabled to add other 
dollars to his little slue. His work preventing 
him from longer attending school, he continued 
his studies for a couple of years under the 
direction of a private teacher. After the age 
of eighteen hi' depended for further culture 
upon general reading and the educational ex- 
periences of the printing office. The St. Cloud 
Visitor, with which he had become connected, 
was a very progressive and fearless organ, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



3°9 



owned and published by his aunt, Mrs. Jane 
(i. Swisshelm, above referred to. It was de- 
voted to temperance, woman's rights, the anti- 
slavery cause and general reforms. Before 
coming to Minnesota, .Mrs. Swisshelm had 
already attained to a National reputation 
through a similar organ called the Pittsburgh 
Visitor. Mr. Mitchell continued in her employ 
until 1S(>4, when he purchased the paper, the 
title of which had meantime been changed to 
the St. Cloud Democrat. Upon assuming pro- 
prietorship, he gave the paper its second re- 
christening, and as the St. ('loud Journal it 
lived and flourished until 1876. During that 
year Mr. Mitchell purchased (he St. Cloud 
Press, and, consolidating it with the Journal, 
initiated the long and prosperous career of the 
St. Cloud Journal Press. In 1892 he sold his 
newspaper, and since that year has been en- 
gaged in the real estate business. Like his 
father, W'il linni P>. .Mitchell is a staunch Re- 
publican, and lias been in service as a public 
official. In 1865 President Lincoln appointed 
him receiver of the land office at St. Cloud. 
Under the ensuing administration, however, he 
was removed, after about a year and a half of 
efficient service. In 1878, by President Hayes, 
he was again appointed to the post of receiver, 
with reappointment four years later by Presi- 
dent Arthur, and continued to serve until his 
removal, for political reasons, in 1885, by Presi- 
dent Cleveland. In 1887 he was made a 
member of the State Normal School board, 
and resident director of the St. Cloud school, 
to which position he has been repeatedly re- 
appointed and which he still holds. In IS71 
.Mr. Mitchell was united in marriage to Miss 
Emily Whittlesey, of Marietta. Ohio. Ten 
children have been born to them, of whom 
eight are living. Mr. Mitchell's father died in 
1896. His mother is still living, also a brother 
and two sisters, as follows: Charles S. 
Mitchell, formerly of St. Cloud, now of Alex- 
andria, editor of the Post-News; Mrs. Henry 
C. Burbank, of St. Paul, and Mrs. Jeau G. Wal 
ton, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Mr. Mitchell's life 
has been, in the main, an uneventful one — as 
events are reckoued; but his work during the 
long years of his editorship was a constantly 



recurring contribution of wholesome and vital 
material to the life forces of his home com- 
munity. And every act of his public and pri- 
vate life, likewise, has been characterized by 
the true tone which emanates from the true 
citizen and man. 



NILS O. WERNER, 



Hon. Nils O. Werner, of Minneapolis, 
was born near Christianstad, Sweden, Jan- 
uary 111, 1848. In 1868 his father, Ola 
Werner, removed with his family from Swe- 
den to America, locating first in Bureau 
county. Illinois, where he engaged in farm- 
ing for nine years; afterwards he removed 
to Red Wing. Minnesota, where he passed 
the remainder of his life. He was the 
father of six children, only two of whom are 
now living. Mr. Werner was educated in his 
native country, in private schools and at the 
college of Christianstad. taking a thorough 
collegiate course in the latter institution. 
Soon after coming to America, in 1868, he de- 
cided upon the legal profession as his future 
career, and became a student in the law office 
at Princeton. Illinois, of Hon. James S. Eckels, 
and remained in his office for nearly two years, 
when, in the fall of 1871), he removed to Red 
Wing, Minnesota. He then resumed his legal 
studies under Hon. W. W. Phelps, one of the 
first two < 'ongressineii from the State of Minne- 
sota. He was admitted to the bar in the spring 
of 1871, began the practice of his profession 
in that year, and continued until 1888. Alto 
get her he was very successful as a lawyer. In 
1874 he was elected Probate Judge of Goodhue 
county, and held the office for ten years, or 
from 1875 to 1885. The fact that Mr. Werner 
was a judge of probate for ten years is evi- 
dence of the public confidence reposed in his 
honesty, fairness and wise discretion. While 
in Red Wing, Judge Werner was always inter- 
ested in the local welfare, and became popular 
as a citizen and prominent in public affairs. 
He was at differenl periods a member of the 
city council and the board of education, and 
his service was always acceptable to his fellow- 



3IO 



BIOGKAI'IIY OF MINNESOTA. 



citizens. lit' is still remembered and respected 
by the people of liis former home, in Red Wing. 
In 1888 Judge Werner removed to Minneapolis, 
abandoning his profession of the law, and has 
ever since been a citizen of the metropolis of 
.Minnesota. He assisted in organizing the 
Swedish-American Bank, and upon the organi- 
zation of that institution was chosen its 
cashier. In ls'.it he was elected president, 
which position he still holds. Mr. Werner is 
well known in financial and business circles 
throughout the Northwest. He has a large 
personal acquaintance and an extensive busi- 
ness intimacy and a general high standing. 
He is regarded as a conservative, prudent man, 
one who studies situations carefully, but when 
liis mind is made up, is quick to act and is 
fairly aggressive on occasions in the conduct 
of business. In politics he has been a lifelong 
Republican. He was married August 17, 1872, 
to Miss Eva < '. Anderson, who, like himself, is 
a native of Sweden. Mr. ami Mrs. Werner are 
members of St. John's Lutheran church, Minne- 
apolis. They have three interesting children, 
named Carl Alexis. Anna Olivia and Nils Olof. 



CHRISTOPHER C. WASHBURN. 

One of the sturdy pioneers of Minnesota, and 
especially of Blue Earth county, was the late 
Christopher < '. Washburn. In 1856 he came 
from Indiana and located a homestead in the 
township of Vernon Center, in that county, and 
the following year he brought and located his 
family upon it. He was a farmer and a 
mechanic, and at the time of his settlement in 
Minnesota was in comfortable circumstances. 
He brought with him a considerable number 
of horses anil cattle and other property, and 
was considered a valuable acquisition to the 
settlement. His pioneer home was well known, 
for it was always a hospitable shelter to the 
traveler, and no "stranger within the gates" 
was ever turned away. It was in his house in 
the winter of 1857-8, when the first public re- 
ligious services in that part of Blue Earth 
county were held. They weic held under the 
auspices of the United Brethren denomination 



and conducted by Rev. Joseph Casselman, and 
many of the pioneer clergymen of Minnesota 
of different denominations have held services 
in thai house. For several years the family 
had the Winnebago Indians for neighbors, and 
they experienced all the discomforts and priva- 
tions of pioneer life, working hard and per- 
forming their full share in the development of 
the country, which they lived to see trans 
formed from a condition of primeval wilder- 
ness to one containing all the features of a 
high civilization. They were menaced, but not 
seriously injured by the Sioux outbreak of 
1862. At one time they and their neighbors 
were, in their isolated condition, in great peril, 
not only from the raids of the Sioux, but from 
a threatened uprising of the Winnebagoes, 
whose reservation was in the county. Mr. 
Washburn was born in Southern Ohio, in 
August, 1819. A portion of his early manhood 
was passed in Kentucky. His good and faith- 
ful wife, who was Miss Julia Showeii, was a 
native of that State. The husband and wife 
made the journey of life together for more 
than half a century, and Mrs. Washburn is 
still living in the full enjoyment of that happy 
condition which comes only to those whose 
lives have been well spent. Mr. Washburn 
died, November 8, ISO'.), deeply regretted 
in the community where he had so long 
resided, as having been among its most 
useful and best esteemed members. Mr. 
and Mrs. Washburn reared to maturity a 
family of four children, some of whom are 
prominent in the affairs of life, and all are 
worthy citizens and respected members of 
society, and who are proud to say that for 
examples of diligence, courage, integrity and 
general right-living, they do not need to go 
beyond their parents. The only daughter is 
Mrs. Jennie Webster, of Juniata City, Ne- 
braska. One of their three sons. E. W. Wash- 
burn, has Ions;- been a merchant at Vernon; 
another is Rev. F. M. Washburn, of California, 
and a third is J. L. Washburn, a prominent 
attorney of Duluth, whose biography appears 
elsewhere in this volume. Mr. Washburn 
never had aspirations for public office, but held 
many local positions of trust and responsi- 




-^f^^^^^^W ~h> //^3^£^ljw^, 






BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



3" 



bility, and occupied fiduciary relations towards 
many of his fellow men, always acceptably. 
His best record is that of an honorable citizen, 
a diligent, sincere and honest man. 



JAMES H. DUNN. 



Like many of our western pioneers, James 
and Mary (O'Hair) Dunn, came to America to 
find a home in a new country, for the purpose 
of bettering their condition. The greater op- 
portunities and the more compensating re- 
wards to industry that this New World gave, 
were more promising to them than anything 
their native Ireland could otter. The business 
of merchandising, in which Mr. Dunn had been 
engaged, was not successful, and that possibly 
suggested the change. They left Dublin in 
1845, and their allegiance to their adopted 
country is emphasized by the service which 
Mr. Dunn so soon rendered by volunteering in 
the American army, and inarching to the Rio 
Grande. He enlisted as a private soldier. Alter 
the war with Mexico, he located for a short 
time at Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was here that 
Dr. James H. Dunn, now of Minneapolis, was 
born, May 29, 1853. The year following his par- 
ents removed to Minnesota, and in Winona 
county was found the future home, purchased 
by patriotic service and paid for by the sol- 
dier's land warrant. In this new farm life James 
Henry Dunn was given his first lessons in in- 
dustry. He remained on the farm until the 
age of fifteen. In the public schools and higher 
institutions of learning in Winona he received 
his early education. He graduated at the State 
Normal School at Winona in the class of 1872. 
For better equipment to enter his chosen pro- 
fession, he placed himself under private 
teachers in special study of languages that con- 
tributed most largely to medical science. He 
matriculated at Bush Medical College of Chi 
cago, and in March, 1878, graduated from the 
Medical Department of the University of New 
York. Preparatory to the further pursuit of 
his medical studies, he became an instructor 
in the Second State Normal School, continued 
in that service during the years 1878 and 187!>, 



and afterwards commenced the practice of his 
profession. He continued to practice a few 
years, but bad ambition to avail himself of the 
advantages for study that are offered in special 
departments by the universities of Germany 
and 1 he hospitals of France and Italy. In 1st:: 
he went abroad and took post-graduate courses 
at Heidelberg and Vienna, where laboratories 
were found at that time to be more fully 
equipped and better adapted for instruction in 
certain branches of medical science than 
were those in America. A season in France 
was devoted to the study and observa- 
tion of French methods and treatments 
and most approved practice. Next Italy 
offered opportunity for further investiga- 
tion, and a short tour of its hospitals was 
made. After his return to America, Dr. Dunn 
located permanently at Minneapolis, and soon 
established a large practice. He was elected 
to the office of city physician, and during the 
years 1887 and 1888, while in that office, he 
organized the City Hospital. At the com- 
mencement of his practice in Minneapolis, he 
became surgeon to Asbury Hospital, and has 
continued in that service to the present time. 
Since the foundation of St. Mary's Hospital, in 
1887, he has been its surgeon in charge; and 
is also Hie consulting surgeon of the Great 
Northern Railway. In the University of Minne- 
sota he is professor of genitourinary diseases 
and adjunct professor of clinical surgery. A 
practice, at first general, has by force of cir- 
cumstances become somewhat circumscribed, 
and his lime is now given chiefly to surgical 
operations and to genitourinary cases and con 
suiting calls. Dr. Dunn has a laudable ambi- 
tion to excel in the great art of clinical 
diagnosis and surgical technique. Experi- 
mental studies for the continuation or refuta- 
tion of new medical and surgical theories 
interest him more than does the pursuit of 
special and original research. For example: a 
study of one hundred and fifty four cases of 
experimental work in abdominal surgery, and 
an original application of a suprapubic cystot- 
omy for cancers of the urethra, published in 
18S8 and disputed in Minnesota — see Annals of 
Surgery, 1894. A new method of tenotomy is 



3*2 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



now in preparation. Dr. I Minn is a student, in- 
vestigator, teacher and practitioner of that 
winch lias been discovered and established, and 
is not absorbed in new theories to the exclusion 
of the older practice. He has had a wide ex- 
perience and a large measure of success with 
all established procedures in general surgery, 
and is conservative in the adoption of new and 
little-tried discoveries, before their value has 
been unmistakably demonstrated. He has be- 
come one of the most trusted and prominent 
consulting practitioners in the Northwest, and 
is a frequent contributor to the leading medical 
and surgical journals. In social life Dr. Dunn 
has attained prominence. In religious faith 
he is a devout Catholic. Pie holds membership 
in the order of Elks, Lodge No. 44; in the 
Minneapolis Club; the State Historical Society; 
the Minneapolis State Medical Association, of 
which he is also an ex president ; the American 
Medical Association; and the Association of 
American obstetricians and Gynecologists. 
His library is especially complete in the litera- 
ture, old and new, of American, English, 
French and German surgical authorities, and 
is one of the most valuable private libraries in 
the Northwest. Dr. .lames Henry Dunn and 
Miss Agnes McDonald were united in mar- 
riage in 1885. One son, named James L., was 
born to them in 1891. Mrs. Dunn is the daugh- 
ter of Hon. J. L. McDonald, formerly Judge of 
the Third Judicial District of Minnesota, and 
now a practicing attorney in St. Paul. 



MARCUS D. GROVER. 

Marcus D. Grover, of St. Paul, Minnesota, 
who is well known as general solicitor of 
tlie Great Northern Railway Company, was 
born at Wells. Rutland county, Vermont. He 
is the son of Allen and Rachel (Crain) Grover, 
and both his parents descended from old 
New England families. His father died in 
Wells, Vermont, in 1865, and his mother at 
Port Henry, Essex county. New York, in 1887. 
He was educated in the public schools of his 
native town and in Troy Conference Academy, 
an institution located in the adjoining town of 



Poultney. After the completion of his academic 

course he began reading law in the office of 
Hon. 1>. E. Nicholson, at Wallingford, Ver- 
mont, and he was subsequently a law student 
with the firm of Tremian & Peckham, at 
Albany, New York, lie was admitted to the 
liar in Rutland county, Vermont, and also in 
September, 1868, to the bar in Schenectady, 
county. New York. His initial experience as 
an attorney was acquired during the winter of 
1868-9, in the oflfice of M. P. Norton, at Troy. 
New York. In the following May he entered 
info partnership with Hon. R. C. Betts, at Gran- 
ville, Washington county. New York. Mr. 
Betts was at that time district attorney of the 
county, but was during the greater part of his 
term prevented from administering the affairs 
of his office on account of ill health. Mr. < trover 
was accordingly authorized to act as prose 
cuting attorney for the county, and performed 
the duties of that office during the period of his 
partner's disability. While associated with 
Mr. Betts, Mr. Grover resided in his native 
State, his home town of Wells being near the 
western boundary of Vermont, and only three 
miles distant from Granville. He was for four 
years a member of the House of Representa- 
tives of Vermont. During his Legislative ex- 
perience he was for three years chairman of 
the Legislative committee on corporations. In 
January, 1S74, his partnership with Mr. Betts 
was dissolved, and he became a member of the 
law firm of Waldo, Tobey & Grover, Port 
Henry, Essex county, New York. In May, 1878, 
Mr. Tobey died. The firm of Waldo & Grover 
was then organized, and Mr. Grover remained 
a member of that firm until 1SN7. when he came 
to St. Paul to assist Hon. W. E. Smith, who 
was at that time general solicitor of the Saint 
Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Com- 
pany. Mr. Smith was compelled by failing 
health to resign his position. Mr. Grover was 
appointed his successor January 1, 1888. Two 
years later the (ileal Northern Railway Com 
pany leased the line of the Saint Paul, Minne- 
apolis & Manitoba Railway Company for along 
term of years, and .Mr. Grover was appointed 
general solicitor of the Great Northern Rail- 
way Company, and its proprietary lines, which 




The Century PuXislttry & Oyravinp Co Chicago- 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



313 



push ion he now holds. He married Miss Vir- 
ginia A. Townsend, a native of Cayuga county, 
New York. He has two daughters, namely, — 
Virginia L., now Mrs. H. Oppenheim, of St. 
Paul, Minnesota, and Myra E. Grover. 



FRANCIS B. CLARKE. 

Francis Byron Clarke, of St. Paul, gen- 
eral traffic manager of the Great North- 
ern Railway, and for nearly thirty years 
prominently connected with the railroad 
interests of the Northwest, was born on 
his father's farm in Madison county. New 
York, July 1, 1839, the son of Ephraim H. 
and Angeline (Crumb) Clarke. His father, 
who was a native of Rhode Island, was a pros- 
perous merchant and a leading dairyman and 
operator in dairy products of the State, and 
his mother was a native of Madison county, 
New York. His English ancestors were among 
the landed gentry of Berkshire. Mr. Clarke 
was raised to young manhood on his father's 
large dairy farm. He was educated in the dis- 
trict schools and at an academy at Alfred, New 
York. In 1859 he came to Minnesota and for 
about a year thereafter was a clerk in a gen- 
eral store at Faribault. He then came to St. 
Paul, and for the next year or more was a sales- 
man for Benedict, Baker & Company, dealers 
in hats, caps and notions, on Third street. In 
1802 he went to Hudson, Wisconsin, and be- 
came a member of the general merchandising 
firm of Clarke, Jefferson & Company, and so 
continued for several years. Many of the most 
prominent and best railroad men of the coun- 
try were born farmers' boys and passed their 
early lives in the country. It was not until 
1S70 when Mr. Clarke entered upon the career 
of a "railroad man," in which he has become 
so distinguished. He then became paymaster 
and land agent of the West Wisconsin Railroad, 
a modest little pioneer railway, exending from 
Camp Douglas. Wisconsin, to St. Paul. In 
1871 he became general freight agent, and also 
general passenger and ticket agent, of the 
West Wisconsin, and removed his office from 
Hudson to St. Paul. He was a success as a 



railroad man from the first, and steadily ex- 
tended the field of his labors and the scope of 
his usefulness. He was called upon to assist, 
and did influential and valuable service, in the 
projection and construction of the several lines 
of road which, in 1873, were consolidated into 
the "Omaha" system, and upon the consolida- 
tion — in which he took a prominent part — he 
was made general traffic manager of the sys- 
tem. He held this position for sixteen years, 
and then, by the imperative commands of his 
physician, he resigned and spent nearly two 
years in Europe. At the time of his resignation 
he seemed quite broken down, but the rest and 
recreation abroad, amid new and attractive 
scenes and surroundings, restored his health, 
and in 1891 he returned to the United States 
fully fitted to resume his active career. In 
June, 1891, he was made vice-president and 
general manager, and the following year presi- 
dent, of the Superior (Wisconsin) Consolidated 
Land Company. Mr. Clarke was connected 
with this company for more than four years, 
and during that time established and built 
manufactories, mills, elevators, and other in- 
stitutions of the aggregate value of millions of 
dollars. September 1, 1895. he became traffic 
manager of the Northern Steamship Company 
at Buffalo, New York, having full charge of 
the passenger and freight business of that com- 
pany, in connection with the Great Northern 
Railway. In December, 1896, he came to his 
present position in the Great Northern. Even 
in his boyhood and early youth, Frank B. 
Clarke was noted for his active, industrious 
spirit and his uniformly correct habits and 
principles. These valuable characteristics have 
impressed his life course. He has performed 
an inrmense amount of brain and hand work 
and is still in harness. As a railroad official 
he is known in commercial circles throughout 
the continent as sagacious, intelligent, enter- 
prising and devoted to his duties, and no man 
in the country is regarded as a better author- 
ity on railroad subjects generally. Since 1871, 
when he came to the city as the agent of the 
little West Wisconsin road, Mr. Clarke has 
had his home residence in St. Paul. He is well 
identified with the city in every way, and is 



314 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



esteemed as one of its best and most valuable 
citizens. For eighteen years he has been one 
of the directors of the First National Bank; he 
has also been a director in the St. Paul Real 
Estate and Title Insurance Company, and of 
the St. Paul Trust Company; has been presi- 
dent of the City Streel Railway Company; was 
one of the live builders, and still one of the 
owners, of the Metropolitan Opera House, and 
is a member of the Boston & Northwestern 
Real Estate Company, a corporation which has 
built and owns several of the largest and best 
business blocks in the center of the business 
district of the city. He is a member of Damas- 
cus Commandery of Knights Templar and other 
civic organizations, and is well known socially. 
He was vice-president of the Winter Carnival 
Association for two seasons, and is known as 
a good and public spirited citizen, a thorough 
gentleman, a true friend, and a splendid char- 
acter throughout. Mr. Clarke was married in 
St. Paul, June 17, 1877, to Miss Lena Burton 
Thompson, a daughter of the late James E. 
Thompson, a former president of the First Na- 
tional Bank, and a well known citizen and 
financier. Mrs. Clarke was reared from girl- 
hood in St. Paul, where she has always held a 
distinguished position in society. She is a lady 
of rare talents and accomplishments, of many 
personal charms 'and graces, and altogether a 
finished type of splendid American woman 
hood. During the Columbian Exposition of 
1893, she Mas president of the Minnesota 
Woman's Auxiliary Board, chairwoman of the 
Woman's Musical Committee, etc. She has 
spent much of her time in recent years abroad 
in superintending the education of her children 
and is well known in the social circles of both 
continents. The three children are named Eg- 
bert Thompson, Francis Lloyd, and Lena Bur- 
ton Clarke. 



CHARLES C. \V EMBER. 

Charles 0. Webber, of the agricultural im- 
plement firm of Deere & Webber Company, 
Minneapolis, was born at Rock Island, Illinois, 
January 25, 185(1. His father. Christopher C. 
Webber, was a native of New York. His edu- 



cation was obtained primarily in the Rock Is- 
land public schools, supplemented by a three 
years' course in Lake Forest Academy. Mr. 
Webber lias been connected with the agricul- 
tural implement trade since early manhood. 
At the age of eighteen he engaged in the serv- 
ice of Deere & Company, the well known and 
long-established manufacturers of agricultural 
implements at Moline, Illinois, adjoining his 
native town. He was in the employ of the com- 
pany, in their general office and as traveling 
salesman, for about three years. In the winter 
of 1881, as the representative of Deere & Com 
pany, he located in Minneapolis, and repre- 
sented the firm on the road for two years. 
When Deere & Company built their large office 
and warehouse at 312-316 North First street, 
Minneapolis, Mr. Webber was admitted to a 
partnership. Later, in 1893, the company was 
incorporated under the firm name of Deere & 
Webber Company, and .Mr. Webber retained, 
and still holds his interest in the corporation, 
■which is admittedly the largest of the kind in 
the Northwest. In politics he is a gold standard 
Democrat. He is a member of the Minneapolis 
and Commercial Clubs. Mr. Webber was 
married, September 18, 1S05, to Miss Mary M. 
Harris, a daughter of Joseph Harris of Monroe 
county, New York, and has one child. 



JED L. WASHBURN. 

Jed L. Washburn, of Duluth, has been a 
practicing attorney in the courts of Minnesota 
for the past twenty years. He has been in Du- 
luth since 1890, and for ten years prior to that 
year was in the practice at Mankato. Mr. 
Washburn was born in Montgomery county, 
Indiana. December 26, 1856. He is the young- 
est son of Christopher C. Washburn, a retired 
farmer and mechanic of Blue Earth county, 
Minnesota, who was one of tin early pioneers 
of southern Minnesota, and of whom a brief 
sketch is given elsewhere in this book. His 
mother, whose maiden name was Julia Showen. 
is a native of Kentucky and a woman of strong 
moral and religious convictions, and of woman- 
ly worth generally, lie was but a few months 




jr 





BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



3'5 



old when his family came overland from the 
I lousier State, in the spring of 18~)7, and set- 
tled upon the land which his father had en- 
tered as a homestead the previous year. His 
boyhood was passed amid the scenes and Gon- 
dii ions of pioneer life in southern Minnesota, 
forty years ago, and he greatly cherishes the 
memories of his acquaintance and association 
with the old settlers of that period, lie well 
remembers the great Indian outbreak of 18G2, 
the alarms, the terrible stories of murder, mas- 
sacre and rapine, and especially the partial 
termination of the troubles in the hanging of 
thirty-eight of the worst participants at Mau- 
kato. Mr. Washburn received an academic ed- 
ucation, including a limited course in literature 
and language, and a good course in mathemat- 
ics. His education has, however, been mainly 
self-acquired outside the schoolroom. His 
reading has been as extensive as his busy life 
permits, and he and his accomplished wife 
possess a large and well selected library. When 
a young man he taught school for a number 
of terms, and while he was a law student was. 
a teacher in the public schools of Mankato. He 
was greatly interested in. and somewhat prom- 
inently connected with the school system of 
Mankato, serving for a number of years on the 
board of education, a large portion of the time 
as president of the board. His study of the 
law was under the instruction of lion. 
Martin .1. Severance, of Mankato, who for 
nearly twenty years has been the able 
and erudite Judge of the Sixth Judicial 
District. Mr. Washburn was admitted to 
the bar in the spring of 1880, although in 
fact he had considerable experience in law 
practice prior to his admission. For ten years 
he was engaged in his profession at Mankato, 
and acquired an extensive and valuable prac- 
tice throughout southern Minnesota. In the 
beginning of 1890 Mr. Washburn removed to 
iMiluth, where he has been so continuously suc- 
cessful that he now has probably as large and 
as important a law business as any attorney 
in the State. Mr. William D. Bailey is asso- 
ciated with him. and Hon. Charles L. Lewis — 
who resigned from the District Bench to enter 
his firm — left it last fall, preparatory to taking 



a seat on the Supreme Court Bench at the be- 
ginning of the year 1900. During Mr. Wash- 
burn's career as a lawyer he has been engaged 
in many important cases, and in a professional 
way has been connected with numerous large 
business and financial transactions. His prac- 
tice has covered a wide range of the various 
blanches of litigation, but for some years past 
he has endeavored to confine himself, as far as 
possible, to corporation and real estate law. 
lie is the attorney at Duluth for several rail- 
way companies, including the Northern Pacific, 
and the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & 
Omaha companies, and he has successfully con- 
ducted much difficult railroad litigation. He 
is counsel for many other corporations and his 
professional duties have taken him to all parts 
of the country. He has a large acquaintance 
in the East as well as in the West, although 
he is purely a Western man, a thorough and 
loyal Minnesotan. The substantial and tangible 
fruits of his industrious and active life work 
are considerable. He owns valuable property 
interests in Duluth, upon the iron ranges and 
elsewhere. He resides in the suburb of Hunt- 
er's Park, where he has a beautiful home with 
ample grounds surrounding, in the care and 
improvement of which he takes great interest 
and enjoyment. In politics Mr. Washburn is 
an independent Democrat, but he has rarely 
taken an active part in his party's affairs, hav- 
ing devoted himself assiduously to his profes- 
sion. Those who know him best say of him: 
"He is generous to a fault, quick to act, a hard 
fighter, an incessant worker, an advocate rath- 
er than a jurist, and he is possessed of a rugged 
honesty which makes him at all times a man 
to be trusted." Mr. Washburn was married, 
in May, 1882, to Miss Alma J. Pattee, who is 
a graduate of the State Normal School at Man- 
kato, and was for some time a teacher in that 
institution. Mrs. Washburn is a native of Wis 
cousin, but of a New England family. She is 
a lady of rare literary ability and is well 
known as a frequent contributor of papers on 
topics which are the subjects of discussion 
and consideration in the literary and socio 
logical societies and associations of which she 
is a member. Mr. and Mrs. Washburn have 



3i6 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



six children, three boys and three girls. The 
eldest sou, Claude Carlos, now sixteen years of 
age, is preparing for admission to Harvard 
University, and the eldest daughter, Julia 
Genevieve, is being educated in the Maynard 
school at Duluth. The other children are 
named: Abbott McC, Mildred, Hope, and 
John Lawrence Washburn. Mr. Washburn lias 
I wo brothers, one of whom, Rev. Francis M. 
Washburn, is a Congregational clergyman in 
California, and the other, Edward W. Wash- 
burn, is a merchant at Vernon Center. Blue 
Earth county. His only sister, now Mrs. Jennie 
Webster, resides at Juniata, Nebraska. 



WILLIAM R, MERRIAM. 

Hon. William Rush Merriam, Governor of 
Minnesota from January, 1889, tc January. 
181)3, has left behind him an admirable record 
in that honorable position. He conies of a dis- 
tinguished ancestry, who settled at ('uncord, 
Massachusetts, long before Minnesota was in- 
habited by the white man. His father, Hon. 
John L. Merriam. lived at Wadham's Mills. 
Essex county, New York, where he was engaged 
in business as a merchant when the subject of 
this sketch was born, July 6, 1849. Hon. John 
L. Merriam was of English descent, and his 
wife, Mahala Delano, of French ancestry. Gov- 
ernor Merriam traces his ancestry to William 
Merriam, who was born at Bedford, Massachu- 
setts, in 1750, and served as a private in Capt. 
Jonathan Wilson's company of minute men, of 
the town of Bedford, Massachusetts. He took 
part in the fight of Concord Bridge, April 19, 
1775, and in pursuit of the British forces in 
their retreat from Concord to Charlestown. He 
was chairman of the board of selectmen in Bed- 
ford, 1777, and rendered important service in 
procuring enlistments to the Continental Army. 
Governor Merriam's father came with his fam- 
ily to Minnesota in 1861, and, in connection 
with Mr. J. C. Burbank, engaged in the stage 
and transportation business. It was before the 
days of railroads, and their business became 
an extensive one. The elder Merriam was iden- 
tified with many enterprises in the develop- 



ment of the State, and took an active interest 
in politics, serving in the State Legislature 
and as Speaker in the House of Representa- 
tives in 1870 and 1871. The subject of this 
sketch was an ambitious lad and entered the 
academy at Racine. Wisconsin, at the age of 
fifteen. Later he entered Racine College, and 
upon his graduation was chosen valedictorian 
of his class, and acquitted himself with honor. 
When he returned to his home in St. Paul he 
devoted himself diligently to business, as a 
clerk in the First National Bank. Here lie 
rapidly developed unusual ability, and 
when only twenty-four years of age was 
elected cashier of the Merchant's National 
Rank. This was in 187::. In 1880 he was made 
vice-president, and four years later became 
the president of the bank. In the meantime 
Mr. Merriam had developed an active interest 
in politics, and had become an active worker 
in every political campaign. He was chosen 
to represent his district in the General Assem- 
bly of Minnesota in 1882, and served his con- 
stituents with distinguished ability. In 1886 
he was again elected to the Lower House of 
the Legislature, and was honored with office 
of Speaker, where his father had presided six- 
teen years before. lie made an admirable pre- 
siding officer, and governed the body with 
courteous self-possession and with a firm, yet 
generous authority. He was chosen vice-presi- 
dent of the State Agricultural Society in 1886 
and president in 1887, and contributed greatly 
to the success of the State fair, held under the 
auspices of that organization. In 1888 Mr. 
Merriam was nominated by the Republican 
party as a candidate for Governor — against 
Hon. Eugene M. Wilson, a Democrat of Minne- 
apolis — and was elected. Here, in his official 
capacity, he applied the business methods to 
the administration of public affairs that he has 
made so successful in his private interests. 
He was honored with a renomination and re- 
election in 1890, and served until January, 
IS'.)::. March 4, 1S99. lie was appointed Di- 
rector of the Census by President McKinley. 
Governor Merriam is a gentleman of very pleas- 
ing address and cordial manners, and has the 
faculty of attaching men to him in warm per- 




* ?n /iriOLc^v~lA~" 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



31/ 



sonal friendship. He is a student of affairs, 
and a financier of recognized ability. His con- 
tributions to the current literature of the coun- 
try on the subject of National finance have 
been important and valuable. He has stood 
firmly and ably by his ideas of sound finance 
and has done much to shape the sentiment of 
his party on that important subject in his 
Slate. Governor Merriam is a member of the 
University Club of New York, the Metropol- 
itan Club at Washington, and the Minnesota 
Club at St. Paul. He is also a member of St. 
Paul's Episcopal church, in the city of St. Paul. 
He was married, in 1872, to Laura Hancock, 
daughter of Mr. John Hancock, and niece of 
the late Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a lady of 
rare accomplishments and gracious manners, 
wlio presides over the home of her distin- 
guished husband with dignity and grace. 



LEVI M. WILLCUTS. 

Levi Monroe Willcuts, collector of customs, 
port of Duluth, Minnesota, was born Novem- 
ber 10, 1861, at Fountain City, Wayne county, 
Indiana. His parents were Jonathan and Mary 
(Starbuck) Willcuts both natives of Wayne 
county, and he is of Quaker descent. His 
father was a well-to-do farmer and extensive 
dealer in live stock, and was a much respected 
and trusted citizen of his community in In- 
diana. He died when the subject of this sketch 
was eleven years of age, his wife surviving him 
only four years. Levi M., who was the fifth 
in a family of eight children, received his 
early education in the common schools of his 
native place. In 1883, at the age of twenty- 
two, he removed to Columbia, South Dakota, 
where he engaged in real estate and loans, op- 
erating largely in farm lands. His business 
prospered, and in 1886 he formed a partnership 
with Maj. M. R. Baldwin, who was subsequent- 
ly elected Congressman from the Sixth Minne- 
sota < 'ongressional District. In the same year 
in which they united their interests the part- 
ners located in Duluth, Minnesota, and en- 
gaged in real estate under the firm name of 
Baldwin & Willcuts; and they did a successful 



business during the good times of that period. 
Mr. Willcuts at once took a prominent place 
among the public spirited citizens of the 
Zenith City. He was elected treasurer of the 
chamber of commerce, which was at that time 
one of the most influential bodies of the kind 
in the Northwest, and was actively identified 
with all the public enterprises for promoting 
the welfare of the city of Duluth and vicinity. 
While Mr. Willcuts possessed all of the impor- 
tant qualifications for success in politics — cool 
uess, keen perception and tact — he did not seek 
prominence in that direction; but it was thrust 
upon him. He first attained to local distinction 
in the Duluth city campaign of 1894, when 
Capt. Ray T. Lewis, the Republican candidate, 
was elected mayor. Mr. Willcuts was chair- 
man of the Republican city committee during 
this campaign, winch was a spirited contest; 
and his ability as a political manager, recog- 
nized at this time, was, two years later, 
brought into urgent requisition, and with most 
gratifying results to his constituency. The 
( 'ongressional fight of 1896, in the Sixth Minne- 
sota District, will live in the history of the 
Slate and, in fact, in the political history of 
the country, as one of the most important and 
stubborn contests of that memorable year. 
Hon. Charles A. Towne, then Congressman 
from the Sixth District, had been elected as a 
Republican; but he became favorably im- 
pressed with the free silver theory and was one 
of its principal champions in the United States, 
being second in prominence only to William 
J. Bryan. Mr. Towne's popularity in the dis- 
trict was very general, and he and his friends 
considered thai his re-election was assured. He 
did not seek the Republican nomination, but 
came out as an independent candidate and was 
afterwards nominated by the Democratic and 
Populist conventions. Here was a popular 
candidate, in a district which is about evenly 
divided between the Republican and fusion 
forces, with the prestige of his office of Con 
gressman and the assurance that if Mr. Bryan 
were elected, he, Mr. Towne, would be the sec 
ond greatest man in the country, because of 
his distinction as a free silver advocate. Such 
was the political status in the Sixth District 



3i8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



when the Republican committee east about it 
for a chairman. It realized that there never 
was a time when so much depended upon the 
careful selection of this functionary, and an 
equally wise choice of candidate to head the 
Republican Congressional ticket. L. M. Will- 
cuts was asked to accept the chairmanship of 
the committee, and Hon. Page Morris was 
urged to step down from the District Bench to 
accept the nomination for Congress in opposi- 
tion to the celebrated free silver candidate, 
which he did at the earnesl solicitation of his 
friends. The campaign opened early, it being 
a Presidential year, and the political excite- 
ment in all parts of the district, for more than 
three months, was tremendous. To many 
shrewd observers of the situation the outlook 
was anything but bright for the success of the 
Republican candidate. It is freely admitted, 
by friends and foes alike, that Mr. Willcuts was 
the backbone of the Republican campaign in 
that contest. He received superb support 
from his committee, but many Republicans 
were disheartened at the seeming odds. 
Throughout the light, however, Mr. Willcuts 
maintained a calm and hopeful exterior, while 
working eighteen hours a day. His serene con- 
fidence was inspiring, and his placid assur- 
ances that Judge Morris would certainly be 
elected braced up the doubting Republicans, 
and, in a measure, disconcerted the opposition. 
Mr. Willcuts straightened out seemingly hope- 
less political tangles with magical ease, and 
friction disappeared more quickly than it ap- 
peared. The power of his expressed convic- 
tions and the enthusiasm that he inspired, per- 
meated the entire district; and the working- 
loyalty of every member of his committee is 
still a matter of frequent remark by him. 
Judge Morris was elected, and Mr. Willcuts 
thereafter inundated by telegrams and letters 
of congratulation. Although he very generous- 
ly endeavored to shift the credit to the com- 
mittee, Mr. Willcuts can never escape credit 
for the success of that campaign. Judge .Mol- 
lis was the first to congratulate him on the 
outcome of the long-drawn and bitter contest; 
and in July, 1897, in his capacity of Congress- 
man, he submitted the name of L. M. Willcuts 



for collector of the port of Duluth, and his 
appointment was confirmed without even the 
suggestion of opposition from any source. Mr. 
Willcuts has made an excellent record as col- 
lector of 1 1 lis important lake port. Business 
and executive ability are reflected in the con- 
duct of the office. Mr. Willcuts was married, 
at the age of twenty one. to Miss Rhoda E. 
Mendenhall, daughter of Stephen and Rachel 
Mendenhall, of Richmond, Indiana. The union 
took place at Richmond, about a year previous 
to Mr. Willcuts' removal to South Dakota. The 
married life of Mr. Willcuts, which was very 
happy, ended- with the death of his wife in 
1896. Mrs. Willcuts left three children, name 
h : Eva R., Walter R. and Ruth E. 



WARREN L. BEE BE. 

Warren Loring Beebe, M. D., of St. 
Cloud, was born at Belpre, Washington 
county, Ohio, March 16, 1848. He is a son 
of Dr. William Beebe, who was also a na- 
tive of Ohio of remote English ances- 
try, and the maiden name of his mother 
was Elizabeth Bathbone. The senior Dr. Beebe 
practiced his profession for many years in 
Washington county, Ohio, and was a surgeon 
of high standing. During the war of the Re- 
bellion he was surgeon of the One Hundred 
and Forty-eighth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He 
died April 15, 1887. Dr. Beebe was educated 
in the common schools and in the Marietta, 
Ohio, College, from which institution he grad- 
uated in 1S70. Engaging in the study of medi- 
cine as his life profession, he graduated from 
the Ohio Medical College, at Cincinnati, in 
1873, with the degree of M. D. In 1876 he 
graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical Col- 
lege, New York, and soon after began the prac- 
tice of his profession in his native village of 
Belpre, where he was engaged for about two 
years. In 1878 Dr. Beebe came to Minnesota, 
and located at St. Cloud, which city has ever 
since been his home. No other member is bet- 
ter known to the fraternity of the medical pro- 
fession in Minnesota than Dr. Beebe, although 
he has been in the State only about twenty-two 




The dntury PiMisluiy &Cnjravmj Co Chuxvpo- 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



319 



years. He is a prominent member of the Stale 
Medical Society, and was its president from 
1890 to 1891. He is also a member of the 
American .Medical Association. From the first 
he has been highly successful, and now has a 
large and satisfactory general practice. He is 
I lie local surgeon of the Northern Pacific and 
the Great Northern railroads at Si. cloud, ami 
is considered an expert and authority on all 
general matters connected with medical and 
surgical science. He is altogether devoted to 
his profession, is still a student and investi- 
galor, and keeps up with the progress and de- 
velopment of the age.- For these reasons, and 
because he is naturally gifted with clear and 
strong mental qualities, may be attributed his 
extraordinary success in the treatment of dis- 
ease and his skill in surgery. Dr. Beebe is a 
Republican, but has no time to engage actively 
in political affairs except to vote. He is a 
member of the Masonic fraternity, of the Odd 
Fellows, and of the Knights of Pythias. He 
is of social tastes and has a very large contin- 
gent of warm personal friends, not only in St. 
Cloud, but throughout the State. He was mar- 
ried, December 28, 1870, to Miss Maria T. 
Harte, at Marietta, Ohio. They have two sons, 
named William H. and Warren Loring, Jr. 



WILLIAM C, SARGENT. 

The Sargents are New England people, their 
ancestors having, many generations back, 
crossed from the mother country and settled 
there. William O Sargent was born in Bos- 
ton, Massachusetts, December 1, 1859. He is 
the son of the late Hon. George B. Sargent, of 
Duluth, Minnesota, a sketch of whose life ap- 
pears in another part of this volume. When 
William C. was four years of age his father 
located in New York City, to engage there in 
financial business, and the boy was sent to the 
public schools of that metropolis for a time; 
then, at the age of ten years, he became a 
student in the Faribault Military Institute. 
Subsequently he took a course of instruction 
at St. John's Seminary, which is situated about 
twelve miles from Syracuse, New York. At 



the dose of his school davs he began at once 
to consider, aud to feel responsible for, his 
future maintenance and fortune. His father, 
who had in the meantime located in Duluth, 
was already one of that city's successful and 
prominent business men; but the Sargents were 
plentifully endowed with the Yankee spirit of 
thrift and independence, which holds to the 
virtue of each man's carving out, as far as pos- 
sible, his own career. William ( '. was still in 
his teens when he came to .Minnesota, prepared 
to go to work at whatever task might present 
itself. Physically he was strong and energetic, 
and his mental temperament such as qualified 
him for pushing his way upward from humble 
beginnings. He procured employment as 
teamster in the logging business, which he fol- 
lowed for a short time, keeping his eyes always 
open for larger opportunities. In 1880 he was 
appointed superintendent of the Duluth Blast 
Furnace Company, and in 188(1 he was made 
manager of the Lakeside Land Company, which 
latter position he held for a period of nine 
years. Like his father, Mr. Sargent has a de- 
cided taste for financiering, and excellent 
capabilities. And for the most part his opera 
tions were successful, and he had laid the 
foundation of a substantial fortune; but during 
the years of financial depression which 
culminated in the panic of 1893, with their ac- 
companying depreciation of real estate, much 
of the property accumulated by him was swept 
away in the general disaster. Thwarted on 
these lines by circumstances beyond his con- 
trol, he sought activity and achievement in 
another direction — that of official life. In his 
political views Mr. Sargent has always been 
strongly Republican, and his enthusiasm and 
energy in political campaigning, early gained 
recognition as a potent force. In 1S9G he was 
nominated for sheriff of St. Louis county, and 
elected by a majority of eighteen hundred 
votes. He was re-elected in November. 1898, 
and is now' an aspirant for a third term, with 
a fair prospect of proving the county's choice 
for the office in 1900. Mr. Sargent is a man of 
many social qualities, and belongs to numerous 
secret organizations, including all the Masonic 
orders and those of the Elks and Foresters. 



320 



BlooiiAPIIY ()F MINNESOTA. 



On January b'>. 1887, Mr. Sargent was married; 
at Syracuse, New York, to Miss Rhobie L. Peck, 
of thai city. Three children were the issue of 
their marriage, one of whom is deceased. 



THOMAS B. LINDSAY. 

Thomas B. Lindsay, a well-known business 
man of Minneapolis, is the seventh of a family 
of ten children. He is of Scotch parentage, his 
father, David Lindsay, having emigrated to 
America from Scotland in 18-41 with six chil- 
dren. David Lindsay settled in New Y'ork 
City, and after remaining there for two years, 
removed to Dodge county, Wisconsin. Four 
more children were born to him in America, 
and of the ten, seven are now living. David 
Lindsay died in 1849. Thomas B. Lindsay laid 
I lie foundation of his education in the common 
schools of Dodge county. He then entered the 
Fox Lake (Wisconsin) Academy, attending that 
institution for two years. At the expiration 
of that time he determined to prepare him- 
self for a commercial life, and accordingly 
went to Detroit, Michigan, entering a business 
college there. In 1805 he removed to Olmstead 
county, Minnesota, and established a general 
merchandising store at that place, lie con- 
tinued in this line for about five years, and in 
INTO disposed of his business and engaged in 
agriculture. While following this calling he 
was honored by being elected to the State 
Legislature, and was a member of that body 
from Olmstead county during the years 1872 
and 187:!. He also, for five years, held with 
credit the office of town treasurer in Olmstead 
county. The public positions which Mr. Lind- 
say has held have come to him entirely un- 
sought, as a recognition of his ability. Mr. 
Lindsay was in the employ of a large Eastern 
house, manufacturers of agricultural imple- 
ments, for ten years, as traveling representa- 
tive and general agent. While in their employ 
he established a reputation for competency and 
executive ability in business affairs. In 1887 
lie went into partnership with his brother, un- 
der the style of Lindsay Brothers. lie has been 
associated with his brother up to Hie present 



time. This firm is located at Xos. 400 to 408 
First street, north. They have established a 
trade, the extent of which is neatly coincident 
willi the entire Xorl Invest. This has been ac- 
complished mainly through the efforts of Mr. 
T. B. Lindsay. He has devoted himself 
to commercial pursuits through the greater 
part of his life, and his success attests 
his thoroughness in business matters. His 
energies have been concentrated upon one par- 
ticular line, and consequently he has come to 
have a knowledge of agricultural machinery 
and implements, which is excelled by few if 
any in the country. Mr. Lindsay has a genius 
for friendship, and is counted as a personal 
friend by many throughout the State. His wife 
was Miss Martha Dye, of Sheboygan Falls, to 
whom he was married September 5, 1866. To 
them one son has been born, E. H. Lindsay, 
who assists his father in the agricultural busi- 
ness. Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay are members of 
the Central Baptist church of Minneapolis. 



EUGENE L. MANN. 



Eugene Langdon Mann, M. D., of St. 
Paul, is a native of Minnesota, born in 
Minneapolis, May 20, 1801. His father. 
Eoratio Eugene Mann, and his mother, who 
before her marriage was Mary Augusta 
Williams, were both of prominent New Eng- 
land families. Horatio Mann was born at 
Randolph, Massachusetts, in 1825, the son of 
Stephen Mann, of Braintree, Vermont. He was 
of the seventh generation in lineal descent 
from Richard Man (as the name was spelled 
in England), the founder of the family in 
America, who joined the Massachusetts Bay 
colony and, according to its records, took the 
Oath of Fidelity at Scituate, Massachusetts, 
January 10, 1044. Horatio Mann studied law, 
was admitted to the bar at Albany, New York, 
practiced for a few years in the East, and 
finally located at Minneapolis. He was elected 
to and served in the first Legislature of Minne- 
sota, which convened in 1850. He is still liv- 
ing and is now a resident of Daytona, Florida. 
Of the Williams family, one branch founded 




The Century Publishing & Qwrtwng Co Chicago* 




*>?>C4^tnz^L > 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



7,2 \ 



Williams College, a1 Williamstown, Massa- 
chusetts, and Hoii. C. K. Williams, the mater- 
nal grandfather of the subject of this sketch, 
was at one time Governor of the State of Ver- 
mont. Dr. Mann obtained all that portion of 
his education, which preceded collegiate work. 
in the public schools of St. Paul, talcing their 
entire course from the lowest primary grade 
to the graduating class of the high school, 
from which he passed, in 1S79, to Hobart Col- 
lege, at Geneva, New York. From the latter 
institution he graduated with the class of 1883, 
receiving the degree of B. A., and being elected 
a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He 
had, also, while a student at the college, been 
an active member of the Kappa Alpha Greek 
Letter Society. In the autumn of the year in 
which he completed his college course, he en- 
tered the Hahnemann Medical College al 
Philadelphia. He obtained his degree of II. D. 
in 188G, his class being one of the first to take 
the full three years' course of instruction at 
that institution. After graduating he served 
for a year as interne in the Ward's Island 
Hospital. He then, in 1887, came to St. Paul, 
opened an office for the practice of his profes- 
sion, and from that time until the present his 
career has been one of continuous success. 
When lie had been about two years in practice, 
the Medical Department of the University of 
Minnesota manifested its confidence in his 
abilities by calling him to the professorship of 
diseases of the nose and throat and of physical 
diagnosis, which position he has ever since 
held. In 1891 he was made professor of dis- 
eases of the nose, throat, heart and lungs, and 
since 1890 his lectures have been confined to 
the specialties of nose, throat and ear. Dr. 
Mann is a member of the staff of St. Luke's, of 
the City and County hospitals, and belongs 
to the staff of local surgeons of the Northern 
Pacific Railroad. In 1898 he was elected presi- 
dent of the State Homeopathic Society. 
Shortly after his election to this post he went 
abroad, spending several months at the medical 
centers of London. Vienna and Germany in 
professional observation and research. lie is 
one who would never be content with anything 
less than the most thorough professional 



knowledge and work possible to him, and his 
judgment and advice are highly valued and 
much sought among the profession. On gen- 
eral as well as special lines, also, he is a man 
of broad information and culture. His whole 
life has been one of unremitting industry, 
which, coupled with his native intelligence and 
balance, was bound to yield the gratifying suc- 
cess he has enjoyed. Although the political 
atmosphere in which he grew up was Repub- 
lican, Dr. Maun has remained unbiased by 
partisan feeling. So that men and measures 
be wise and just, he cares not from what party 
they issue. June If), 1891, Dr. Mann was 
married to Mrs. Clara W. Carpenter, whose 
father, the late George W. Wort hen, was a 
merchant and old resident of Lebanon, New 
Hampshire. The home of Dr. and Mrs. Mann 
in St. Paul contains a fine library of historical 
and literary works which the Doctor has col- 
lected, and among which he passes most of his 
leisure hours, his wife joining him with en- 
thusiasm in the pursuit of knowledge. Dr. and 
Mrs. Mann are regular attendants at the House 
of Hope Presbyterian church in their home 
city. 



HENRY HUTCHINSON. 

Henry Hutchinson, M. D., of St. Paul, was 
boin at Chateau Gay, a small town near Mon- 
treal. Province of Quebec, Canada, August HO, 
1st!). His father. John Hutchinson, emigrated 
from Queen's County. Ireland, and settled in 
Montreal in about 1830. His occupation was 
that of a mason and builder, which he followed 
for a number of years in the city of Mont teal. 
Here he was also married, some time in the 
early thirties, to Miss Isabella Patterson, of 
Scotch Presbyterian parentage, whose family 
had emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland, and 
settled in Montreal about the same time as her 
husband. Nothing definite is known of the 
paternal grandfather of Dr. Hutchinson, ex- 
cept that he was a respectable fanner in 
Queen's county. Ireland, of English descent. 
the family being, so far as known, of the Meth- 
odist denomination. The paternal grandmoth- 
er of Dr. Hutchinson was of Huguenot-French 



32- 



BIOGRAPHY <>F MINNESOTA. 



extraction, and his maternal grandmother was 
a native of Switzerland. The latter married 
a Mr. Patterson, an officer in the British 
army, who was placed on the retired list after 
seeing active service in the Peninsular cam 
paign, and being wounded at Badejos, Spain. 
When Henry was three years of age. his par- 
ents removed from Montreal to Buffalo, New- 
York. After living there about three years 
they then removed to Painesville, Ohio. Prom 
thence the family returned to Canada within 
a year, owing to the prevalence in northern 
Ohio at that time of malaria, from which sev- 
eral of the children were suffering. They set- 
tled in Toronto, Ontario, intending to make 
that city (heir future home, but the financial 
crisis of 1857, affected business to such an ex- 
tent that Mr. Hutchinson determined to emi- 
grate to the wilds of Minnesota and seek his 
fortune there. This he did in the spring of 
1858, and settled on a farm near Northfleld, 
Rice county, of this State. Mrs. Hutchinson 
followed with the family the succeeding year. 
To Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson were born thir- 
teen children, five of whom died in early child- 
hood. The eight remaining children grew to 
adult age. and all excepting the eldest son, 
Frank, are still living. He died in Chicago 
some sixteen years ago. In the year 1862 the 
three older brothers enlisted in the Sixth Reg- 
iment, Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, and 
served their adopted country until the close 
of the War of the Rebellion. Two of them 
rose from the ranks to commissioned officers, 
Robert R. being captain and John second lieu- 
tenant in their regiment. At the time of his 
brothers' enlistment Henry, then in his thir- 
teenth year, was a strong, rugged boy, and the 
nearest to a man in physical strength of any 
member of the family left at home. His father 
had been crippled by rheumatism and was 
somewhat broken in health as well as in spir- 
its, by his financial losses before leaving Can 
ada. During the years of the war, Henry lived 
on the farm and became accustomed to all 
kinds of farm labor. During this time he had 
only the opportunity of attending school 
through the winter months. A natural desire 
lor an education, together with his mother's 



earnest wish that he might attain one, led him 
in make the most of the meager opportunities 
ai his command. Most of his evenings, and 
any spare time during the day, were occupied 
in reading, the careful selection of books be- 
ing directed by his mother. In his seventeenth 
year, his father gave him the remainder of his 
time until he should reach his majority, in or- 
der that he might gratify this longing for an 
education. The ambitious youth started out in 
the world with only a strong and healthy 
physique and the inspiration he received from 
his mother to rely upon for accomplishing his 
purpose. By working as a farm hand in the 
summer season he was enabled to attend Car- 
leton College, at Northfleld {which was then 
but a preparatory school or academy), during 
the winter months. At the same time he paid 
for his board by keeping books in a hotel in 
Northfleld. Here he remained for about two 
years, when, in the strange sequence of human 
events, he formed an acquaintance which was 
destined to influence the trend of his whole 
life. This was in the strong personality of Dr. 
Allied P. Skeels, a physician of the Homeo- 
pathic school of practice, who had recently 
come I here from St. Louis, Missouri, in quest 
of health. Dr. Skeels took a great personal 
interest in the ambitious student, and knowing 
under what disadvantages be was striving to 
obtain a classical education, advised him to 
discontinue his efforts to that end, and induced 
him to take up the studj - of medicine. The 
two years following were occupied in the pur- 
suit of these studies, and incidentally in teach- 
ing school winters, which, however, never in 
terfered with his medical studies. A certain 
amount of reading was laid out for each day. 
and this task had to lie accomplished before 
he retired at night. In the spring of 1S72 his 
preceptor died, leaving the young man in whom 
he had taken such a kindly interest his library 
and office appurtenances, with the request that 
he should settle up the doctor's business and 
keep up his medical studies. In the autumn 
of that year our subject was enabled to go 
to Philadelphia to attend his first course of lec- 
tures, his next older brother, John, advancing 
the funds required, above what he had himself 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



earned and saved for that purpose. In the 
spring of 1S74 be graduated from the Hahne- 
mann Medical College of Philadelphia, and at 
once returned to Northfleld to establish him- 
self in practice. Here he remained for four 
years and a half, and besides earning sufficient 
money t<> pay the debts he had incurred, in 
obtaining his degree in medicine, he was most 
fortunate in contracting a life partnership, 

which lias ever since 1 n an inspiration and 

a guide to life's best endeavors, viz., his mar 
riage, in June, isT.'i, to .Miss Matilda McCurdy, 
of Delhi, New York. For two years Dr. Hutch- 
inson served as deputy coroner of Rice county. 
In the autumn of 1878, finding a country prac- 
tice very laborious, and realizing that he had 
extended it to its limits in that location, he 
determined to establish himself in a larger 
city, and accordingly came to St. Paul. Here, 
in the course of two or three years, he built 
up a large and lucrative practice, so that in 
L887 he felt warranted in going abroad for 
icst and study. He spent his time principally 
in the hospitals of London and Paris. In 1890 
he again went abroad, visiting London and 
Paris, also Berlin, where the World's Congress 
of Physicians and Surgeons was in session, and 
of which organization he was a member. Dr. 
Hutchinson toot an active part in organizing 
the Medical Department of the University of 
Minnesota in 1887, representing the Homeo- 
pathic School on several committees, and oc- 
cupied the chair of practice in that department 
for about five years, when he resigned, lie was 
largely instrumental in obtaining the admis- 
sion of his school of practice, first in St. Luke's 
Hospital, and later in the City and County 
Hospital of St. Paul, lie has been honored 
with appoinlnicni on both these stall's, as well 
as upon that of St. Joseph's Hospital, of SI. 
Paul. Dr. Hutchinson has been president of 
the Minnesota State Institute of Homeopathy; 
a member of the American Institute of Home- 
opathy; president of the St. Paul Homeopathic 
Hospital Club, and for the past four years has 
served as a member of the Minnesota Slate 
Board of Health, of which organization he has 
been twice elected vice-president. Dr. Hutch 
inson is naturallv a student and a great reader. 



and has always regretted that his eircum 
stances in early life prevented his (akin- a 
literary degree. Besides a very complete pro 
fessional library, he has also accumulated a 
large miscellaneous library, embracing history, 
travels, classical fiction and scientific works. 
I le is an able writer and has done much to raise 
the standard of his school, and the respect 
accorded it, both in and outside of the proles 
sion. In 1897 Dr. Hutchinson made a trip to 
South America in the interest of the Orinoco 
Company, Limited, to examine into and make 
a report on the iron and other valuable re- 
sources located on a 12,000,000 acre concession 
obtained by this company from the Venezuelan 
Government. From his boyhood Dr. Hutchin- 
son has always been a hard worker, and what- 
ever degree of success he has attained has been 
accomplished by his own personal efforts alone. 
Whenever congratulated upon this success by 
his friends .and associates, he never fails to 
mention, with much feeling, the kind and care- 
ful instruction and advice he received from his 
saintly mother, of whom he is wont to say: 
"she possessed a gentle and religious nature, 
and was always seeking to inspire me with a 
determination to be a good and useful man. 
Whatever success 1 have attained in this 
world, and my faith in a life beyond, is the 
direct result of this inspiration." One who 
knows by personal experience whereof he 
speaks, says of Dr. Hutchinson: 

"Those who have enjoyed I he professional 
services of Dr. Hutchinson, in times of sick 
ness. have no difficulty in determining what 
are the characteristics that have made him so 
successful and so beloved. The very sight of 
his strong and robust frame entering the sick 
room is the beginning of cure. Health seems 
catching, as well as disease, and the invalid 
feels that strong currents of life are in that 
powerful physique beside his bed. If this is a 
gift of nature, the bright and cheerful hope- 
fulness which characterize Dr. Hutchinson has 
been acquired and maintained through many 
trials and disappointments. It is something 
not lightly to be regarded, that a physician, 
even in serious and alarming diagnoses, is able 
In sustain his patient's nervous strength and 
vitality by an air. of confidence and optimism. 
Xol that Dr. Hutchinson lacks the element of 



3-4 



P.IOOKAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



seriousness and permits Iris patients to indulge 
in vain expectations. But lie has the faculty 
and tact of explaining the real conditions, se- 
rious as they may be, without breaking down 
the patient's faith in the eventual triumph of 
nature and medical skill. The kind and sym- 
pathetic heart of the man shows itself always, 
and one feels that a deep personal interest in 
the case insures the best thoughtfulness ami 
medical treatment the skilled physician can 
give. There are many physicians whose pa- 
tients prize them for (heir skill and knowledge, 
while they are not drawn to (hem by any warm 
personal affection; and there are many physi- 
cians whose patients love (hem, but do not 
rank them very high in mental or scientific at- 
tainment. Dr. Butchinson has the happiness 
of being loved both for himself and for his 
professional ability. This combination of pow- 
ers has given him an extensive and lucrative 
practice and a large circle of friends, and these 
friends include the principal practitioners in 
the Allopathic School of Medicine in the Twin 
Cities." 

A brother physician has this to say of Dr. 
Hutchinson : 

"The most prominent characteristic of Or. 
Hutchinson is his personal magnetism and 
power. People instinctively trust him and his 
mere presence in the sick room is inspiring. 
He is a man of broad ideas in medicine. While 
he numbers his friends as well among those 
who disagree as among those who agree with 
his views, he demands the same generosity that 
he extends, and is an effective champion of his 
own cause when attacked. A member of the 
Homeopathic School of Medicine, he has been 
largely instrumental in securing recognition 
for that school in the hospitals in St. Paul. Be- 
sides attending to the duties of an extensive 
practice, Dr. Hutchinson has found time to 
make his influence felt in outside matters. He 
is an active member of the State Board of 
Health, and one of the executive committee of 
the National Park Association, and it may be 
truly said of him that in whatever he engages, 
he throws his whole energy. He is always an 
active member, never a passive one, in any 
good work that engages his attention." 



OTTO LUGGEE. 



Otto Lugger von Hagen, Professor of Ento- 
mology of the University of Minnesota and 

Slate Entomologist, was born in Hagen. West 



falia, Germany, September 15, ls-U. His father 
was Fritz Lugger von Hagen, a professor of 
chemistry in different educational institutions 
of Prussia. He was an original investigator 
in scientific and experimental chemistry, and 
allied sciences, and became a man of great 
prominence in scientific and educational cir- 
cles. His ancestors were mostly officers in the 
Prussian army, descendants from an old Pros 
sian family, whose records are traced back In 
the Fourteenth Century. His mother's maiden 
name was Lina von Fischer, also descended 
from an old Prussian family, whose male mem 
hers were, many of them, officers in the Prus- 
sian army. Otto Lugger was the oldest of a 
family of four children, and was the only one 
of the family to come to the United States. He 
was educated at the Gymnasium at Hagen, 
and later at the universities at .Monster, Bonn, 
and Berlin. He entered the army in a cavalry 
regiment stationed at Minister, and became a 
lieutenant in 1864. He left the army to enter 
the Polytechnicum at Berlin, and later at 
Heidelberg. In 1865 he came to the United 
States, and almost immediately entered the 
United States engineer service in the lake sur- 
vey, at Del mil. Michigan, lie remained in that 
service for three years, when he becalm- assist- 
ant to the Slate entomologist of Missouri, Pro- 
fessor < '. Y. Riley, with whom he remained 
until 1ST"), when he became curator of the 
Maryland Academy of Science in Baltimore. 
He soon afterwards entered the Johns Hopkins 
University at Baltimore, being at the same 
time the naturalist of the public parks in I hat 
city. After spending three years in the de- 
partment of agriculture — division of entomol- 
ogy — in Washington, he was appointed by the 
board of regents of the University of Minne- 
sota to become professor of Entomology and 
Botany, at the experiment station, at St. An- 
thony Park. St. Paul, which important position 
he has occupied for eleven years. During this 
time he has written a large number of books 
and bulletins, illustrating his work in the 
study of fish, insects, plants and their diseases. 
all of which have been published by the State 
or the State University. Dr. Lugger is. per- 
haps, foremost authority on the subject of 




The Century Publishing & Cngraviny Co Chicqytr 



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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



325 



Entomology in the United Slates, especially as 
applied I" the Northwest. His bulletin on the 
Rocky mountain locust is considered authority 
on that subject. He lias experimented and 
originated several different ways of fighting off 
and exterminating the grasshopper and the 
chinch bug. He lias also made a special study 
of the army worm, and his discoveries have 
been of the greatest value to the agriculturist. 
He is so thoroughly posted on all native insects 
and their habits that he knows at once what 
lo do to fight them off and destroy them. He 
has collected a museum of all Hie animals, 
birds and insects native to Minnesota, and has 
studied their habits to know upon what they 
feed at all times of the year — to know what is 
the friend of the farmer and what are his ene- 
mies — what to encourage and protect, and 
what to discourage and destroy. He also pub- 
lished a bulletin on entomology in 1893 — "an 
illustrated classification of insects, and their 
relation to agriculture." He has been for four 
years Stale Entomologist, and has issued four 
volumes of reports. These works are of great 
importance to (he agriculturists, as he treats 
fully on the subject of insects destructive to 
fruits, grains, and to animals, chickens, and on 
other features of great interest to the farmer 
and fruit grower. Professor Lugger was mar- 
ried, February i>, 1856, ti> Lena Rosowald, a 
native of Eserlohn, Westphalia, Germany. They 
are the parents of two children, Linnea and 
Humboldt. 



CLARK W. GILMORE. 

• 'lark William Gilmore, of Pipestone, was 
born at Potsdam, Xew York, -Lily 8, 1852. The 
remote paternal ancestry is Scottish. His fa- 
ther, William Gilmore, was a native of New 
Hampshire, who was engaged in agriculture 
during the greater pari of his life. His deatli oc- 
curred at Potsdam, New York, in the year 1878. 
In his early years Clark W. attended the coun- 
try schools in the vicinity of his home, after- 
wards taking a four years' course of instruction 
in the normal school at Potsdam. He completed 
his studies in 1872, and in the following year, 



at the age of twenty-one. came to the West. 
In 1S74 he located in Rochester, Minnesota, 
where he continued to reside for three years. 
He decided to follow the legal profession, and 
having devoted the necessary amount of time 
to the reading of law, he gained admittance to 
the bar in Dodge county. He began his career 
as a legal practitioner at Mankato, Minnesota, 
remaining in that city until 1882. It was dur- 
ing the summer of the above year that he set- 
tled in Pipestone, his present place of 
residence, and where, with the exception of 
one year, he has been continuously engaged in 
the practice of his profession since first local 
ing there. In politics Mr. Gilmore is a Repub- 
lican, and is an interested and active member 
of his party; but, although as a thoroughgoing 
lawyer and fluent speaker he is well qualified 
for public life, he has manifested no aspirations 
in that direction beyond the professional offices 
of county and city attorney. He has served 
for two terms in the former capacity. He has 
no need of seeking further duties than those 
which come to him in his legal nook above the 
Pipestone County Bank, duties which he per- 
forms with an ability and faithfulness that tix 
his place among the foremost of the city's law- 
yers. .Mr. Gilmore took an active interest in 
the late Spanish-American war. He recruited 
Company M of the Fifteenth Minnesota Vol 
unleers. of which he was made captain, and 
was in camp with the regiment at Camp 
Ramsey, Minnesota, at Camp Mead, Har- 
risburg, Pennsylvania, and at Camp Mac 
kenzie, Augusta, Georgia. His term of 
military service lasted from July, 1898, un- 
til March, 1899, he being honorably dis- 
charged by the Government on the 27th of 
the last-named month. On February 5th. 1878, 
at Rochester, Minnesota, Mr. Gilmore was 
united in marriage to Miss Carrie A. Mount, 
daughter of F. L. V. Mount, of that city. Five 
children have been born of their union; but 
death has been a frequent visitor at the do- 
mestic hearth of Mr. Gilmore, two of Hie 
children having been taken, and Mrs. Gilmore 
having died on the 26th day of May, 1896. Mr. 
Gilmore is an active member of the Masonic 
fraternity. He has been master four terms. 



326 



RIOGRARIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



and is n member of the Chapter and Comman- 
dery, and was one time an officer of the Grand 
Lodge of Minnesota. 



FREDERICK KKIIX. 



Frederick Kron, whom everybody in Man- 
kato knows as a successful merchant and 
thrifty business man, was born in Milwaukee, 
August !>. 1852. His parents were Clemens 
and Johanna (Armbruster) Kron; both par- 
ents were natives of Baden, Germany. His 
father emigrated to America in 1847 and fol- 
lowed his trade of harnessmaMng in Philadel- 
phia for a time, and then settled in Milwaukee, 
where he was married, and engaged in the 
hotel business. In 1853 he went to St. Paul, 
and thence to Mankato, where he put up a log 
building — being assisted by the Indians in its 
construction — and kept a frontier tavern, 
among the first built in Mankato. The town 
at that time was only a boat landing and trad- 
ing post. After a few years he put up a frame 
building on the same site, known as the Minne- 
sota House. Frederick was only ten months old 
when his parents came to Mankato. His first 
experience in school was in a log building on 
(he site where the union school now stands. He 
afterwards attended the nunnery school with 
I he Sisters of Notre Dame, where he remained 
about four years. After leaving school he re- 
mained at home and assisted in the hotel up 
to the time of his father's death, in 1873. After 
his decease. Frederick took charge of the hotel, 
for his mother, about two years. He then 
rented the place and conducted it on his own 
account for two years. In 1877 he erected a 
new building on a part of the ground where the 
hotel stood and went into the mercantile busi- 
ness, opening a general store for the sale of 
dry goods, groceries, etc. After ten years 
he sold his slock of goods, leased the store, and 
retired from business for about five years. Din- 
ing this time he traveled extensively in the 
West and South, then returning to Mankato. he 
opened a store in the same building, which 
he still owned, lie boughl a new and superior 
stock of goods, and built up a very successful 



business. In 1895, to accommodate his grow- 
ing trade, he erected the elegant brick block 
he now occupies. The entire block, fifty by 
one hundred feet, four tloors, is devoted 
to the different departments — groceries and 
house furnishing goods in basement; dry 
goods, notions and gents' furnishing goods on 
first floor; carpets, curtains, cloaks and milli- 
nery on the second floor; trunks, linoleum and 
oil cloth and storage on the lop floor. This is 
the largest, and in fact the only store of the 
kind in Mankato. Mr. Kron has been uniform- 
ly successful in his commercial career, owing 
perhaps, to his close attention to the smallest 
details of his business, and to his knowledge 
of what the public wants; but more especially 
to his liberal policy in the treatment of his cus- 
tomers and his reputation for strict honesty 
and reliability. Resides his mercantile business, 
Mr. Kron has been largely interested in real 
estate, buying and selling, building and rent 
ing, and he is a large property owner. He was 
at one time a director in the Mankato National 
Rank, and is a stockholder in the Mankato 
State Rank. He is an enterprising, public spir- 
ited citizen. Who has always been ready to aid 
in any enterprise for the public good. Mr. 
Kron was married, in May. 1875, to Miss Clara 
Ullman, of .Mankato. They have no children. 



JOHN F. MEAGHER. 

John Ford Meagher was born in County 
Kerry. Ireland. April 11, 1836, and died in 
Mankato. Minnesota, June 18, I SOT. He was 
the son of Jeremiah and Catherine Meagher. 
both of whom died when he was about ten 
years of age. Shortly after their death he and 
his elder brother and their sister — the only 
surviving members of the family — came to 
A merica and settled on a farm in LaSalle coun- 
ty. Illinois. For the ensuing three years of his 
boyhood he lived on this farm, attending school 
for about two years. When he was fourteen he 
bound himself as an apprentice to learn the 
tinners' trade with a tinsmith at Ottawa, Illi- 
nois. His apprenticeship lasted three years,- 
and his wages were thirty dollars for the first 



BIOORAl'lTY OF MINNESOTA. 



3-7 



year, forty dollars for the second, and fifty dol- 
lars for the third. But at the end of his time 
he had become so proficient a workman that, 
although he was but seventeen years of age, 
he had no difficulty in securing employment 
at regular journeyman's wages. Upon reach- 
ing the age of twenty-one, when he was "his 
own man." he decided to come to the then Ter- 
ritory of Minnesota. In September, 1857, he 
took passage at Dunleith, Illinois, on the 
steamer "Northern Light" for St. Paul. But 
at Hastings he met a friend, who informed him 
that a firm that had just opened a hardware 
store at Faribault wanted a practical tinner. 
So he went to Faribault, secured the situation 
and held it until the following spring. In 
•Tune, 1858, a hardware firm at Hastings de- 
cided to open a branch store in Mankato and 
engaged young Meagher to aid in establishing 
it. and to remain and assist in its man- 
agement. Three years later, in 1861, he 
bought out the firm and engaged in business 
for himself, and Mankato was ever after his 
home. He continued in the hardware busi- 
ness for several years, and was very suc- 
cessful in his business operations. In time 
he became identified with other business inter- 
ests of the town. In 1868 he assisted in the 
organization of the First National Bank, and 
was its vice-president until in 1872, when he 
and others organized the Citizens' National 
Bank, of which he was president during its ex- 
istence, which terminated in 1892, when the 
National Citizens' Bank was organized, and 
Mr. Meagher became its president, and held the 
position until his death. Mr. Meagher was 
active and always interested in all enterprises 
for the improvement of Mankato and the wel- 
fare of Minnesota, and did his whole duty for 
both, in peace and in war. When the startling 
news of the great Indian outbreak reached 
Mankato, August 19, 18<>2, the townspeople of 
the place were summoned to the levee by the 
ringing of the big town bell. A company of 
volunteers were at once organized to go to the 
relief of New TJlm, then sore beset by the sav- 
ages. Mr. Meagher was tendered the captaincy 
of the company, but declined the honor, offer- 
ing, however, to serve in any other capacity. 



He was then made first lieutenant and (he com- 
pany hurried to New Ulm, where, under the 
command of Col. Charles E. Flandrau, it par- 
ticipated in the hard-fought battle which 
finally defeated 1 he Indians and caused them to 
retreat. The gallantry with which the mem- 
bers of the Mankato company served at New 
Ulm is a matter of notoriety and of recorded 
history, and is referred to elsewhere in this 
volume. After active hostilities had ceased in 
(his quarter a part of the company was sta- 
tioned at South Bend. Mr. Meagher returned 
to .Mankato and organized another company 
for the defense of the town. Soon after he was 
commissioned by Governor Ramsey as captain 
and placed in immediate command of the post 
of Mankato. and was in the State military serv- 
ice until the close of the war. In the material 
interests of Mankato generally Mr. Meagher 
became actively and substantially interested. 
At different periods he was a director in the 
Mankato Brick Company, the Mankato Woolen 
Mill Company, the Mankato Axe Company, and 
in the Mankato Gas and Electric Light Com 
pany. He was also a director in the Wells 
branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul 
Railroad. He became known throughout a 
great portion of the State as identified with a 
number of business and financial institutions. 
In Stillwater he was a director in the North- 
western Manufacturing and Car Company. In 
St. Paul he was a stockholder in the St. Paul 
Trust Company, the First National Bank, the 
National German-American Bank, the Com- 
mercial Bank, and in many other enterprises. 
Politically, Mr. Meagher was a Democrat. He 
was the candidate 1 of his party on several oc- 
casions, and although it was in the minority 
in his section of the State, he was uniformly 
elected; his personal popularity, with the vot- 
ers who knew him, carried him through. His 
first candidacy was for county treasurer in 
ISC,:',, ami although no Democrat had been 
elected in Blue Earth county for years, he was 
elected by a large majority, while all his as- 
sociates on I he ticket were 1 defeated. In 1869, 
while he was in the East on a business trip, 
and without his being consulted, he was nomi- 
nated as the Democratic candidate for Repre- 



32 



8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



sentative in the Legislature. The district was 
regarded as hopelessly Republican, and no 
particular effort was made in his behalf in the 
campaign, yet he was elected by a good major- 
ity, and served in the session of 1870. He was 
re-elected in 1871 by an increased majority. In 
1N72 he was elected to the State Senate, and 
while in service in this body was a member of 
the leading committees, as the committee on 
finance, on railroads, on education, etc. His 
record was particularly clean, able, and val- 
uable in both the House and Senate. His 
conduct was straightforward, frank and high- 
toned, and he numbered among his best friends 
men of both political parties who served with 
him and were impressed with his honesty of 
purpose, his ability and his general manly qual- 
ities. In the Tilden-Hayes Presidential cam- 
paign of 187(i he was a Democratic candidate 
for elector at large. In Mankato he served 
three years as a member of the city council, 
and for a time was president of the council. 
He was also for one year chairman of the board 
of county commissioners of Blue Earth county. 
Mr. Meagher held many important positions of 
public trust and responsibility by appointment. 
In 1881 Governor Hubbard appointed him a 
member of the board of trustees for the State 
Hospital for the Insane, and he was re-ap- 
pointed by Governors McGill and Nelson. In 
1SS7 the Legislature made him a member of 
the board of trustees to re-locate the State 
Reform School. In 1888 the same authority 
designated him as one of the commissioners to 
erect the New Ulm battle monument. In behalf 
of the commission, Mr. Meagher made the 
presentation address in turning over the mon- 
ument to the State at its formal dedication. 
August 2:?, 1891. John F. Meagher established 
his character and reputation and acquired his 
private fortune by the exertions of his own 
brain and muscle. Left a poor Irish orphan 
lad at ten years of age, he made his way 
through life almost single-handed, without the 
aid of influential friends, without even the 
advantage of a good education. He succeeded 
by going resolutely to work and sticking to it. 
By perseverance in the course he marked out 
for himself, by an unvarving line of rigid in- 



tegrity and honorable conduct and an intelli- 
gence strengthened by the adversities with 
which he had to contend, he earned a fortune 
of the world's goods and — what was better 
and of more value to him — he secured the re- 
spect and esteem of all who knew him. A 
persona] friend of Mr. .Meagher says of his per- 
sonal characteristics: 

"John F. Meagher was of commanding pres- 
ence, with pleasing and impressive features. 
In height he was about five feet ten inches. 
was well built and his weight averaged 
from 225 to 250 pounds. His mind was 
clear, active, and strong, and in his utter- 
ances and his writing there were an earnest- 
ness, an originality, and a force that carried 
conviction. His acquaintance among the pub- 
lic characters and business men of the State 
was large; few Minnesotans were more gener- 
ally known or more highly respected. Mr. 
.Meagher was a fine-looking man personally, 
and he was a worthy associate of the remark- 
able men who comprised the pioneers of Minne- 
sota." 

Mr. Meagher was married, September 14, 
1866, to Miss Mary A. Battelle, of Brooklyn, 
New York. She. too, was a native of Ireland, 
and a daughter of John Battelle, who came 
with his family to America in 1860. She died 
at Santa Barbara. California, April 24. 1895. 
Mr. and Mrs. Meagher were the parents of sev- 
en children, viz.: John It., now cashier of the 
National Citizens' Lank of Mankato, and presi- 
dent of the Mankato Gas and Electric Light 
Company; Alonzo E., who died August 2:'., 
issii.ni 1 he age of twenty-one; J. William, who 
died March T, 1893, aged twenty-two; Felix 
K., Katherine F.. Mary B., and Agnes J., — the 
last four named now residing at Mankato. 



CHARLES HORToX. 



The city of Winona owes its growth and de- 
velopment largely to the extensive lumber 
business that has been its leading industry al- 
most from the time that the town was found* d, 
and which has made the city one of the leading 
lumber centers of the State. That such a con- 
dition should exist in this community naturally 






/^"«^< £<-^J 




/ 



P.IOGRAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



3 2 9 



reflects credit upon the men who have been 
identified with these interests, prominent 
among whom is the subject of this sketch, 
Charles Horton. Mr. Horton was born in the 
State of New York, at Niles, Cayuga county, 
March 31, 1836, the son of Gabriel and Eliza 
(Corwin) Horton. The father, who was a farm 
er in moderate circumstances, traced his ances- 
try back to the Huguenots who first settled on 
Long Island. Charles received his early edu- 
cation in the schools of his native town. In 
18~>2 h" went to Athens, Pennsylvania, where 
he worked in the saw-mills and lumber yards, 
handling lumber and running it down the 
Susquehanna river to Columbia. In 1850 he 
came to Winona and found employment in the 
saw-mill of Porter & Oarlock; and the follow- 
ing winter went to the pineries, where he 
worked some time for Gen. C. C. Washburn. 
In the spring of 1860 the wages that were due 
Mr. Horton were paid by Genera] Washburn in 
lumber. Towing these logs down the river, 
Mr. Horton brought them to Winona, and, in 
company with L. C. Porter and Andrew Ham 
ilton, he began the manufacture of lumber. 
This was the beginning of what has grown to 
be one of the most important lumber compa- 
nies in the State, with Mr. Horton at its head. 
The original organization was the Porter, Hor- 
ton Company, which continued until 1865, 
when Mr. Porter sold his interest, and the 
name was changed to Horton & Hamilton. In 
L880 Mr. Horton bought out Mr. Hamilton, 
and the Empire I. umber Company was then 
formed, in connection with 0. II. Ingram, 
■lames Kennedy and I >. M. Dulaney. It was 
first organized under the laws of Wisconsin, 
but in the spring of 1899 was reorganized un- 
der the laws of Minnesota, with Mr. Horton as 
president of the company. Other enterprises 
beside the lumber business have attracted Mr. 
Morton's attention, and he is now president of 
the Interstate Elevator Company of Winona, 
and is vice-president and holds a directorship 
in the First National Hank of Winona. He 
has been a lifelong Republican, but never has 
had any desire for public prominence. He has, 
however, because of his interest in educational 
affairs, served for a number of years on the 



school board, and has also devoted a good deal 
of his time to the affairs of the Woodlawn 
Cemetery Association, in which he takes a 
great interest, and of which he has been presi- 
dent for a number of years. He is senior war 
den in the Episcopal church, and recently built 
fur it a rectory, which is a most attractive and 
substantial structure. He was married, in 
December, 1865, to Alice M. Rogers, of Bing- 
hamton, Xew York. They have five children: 
KateW.; Helen E.; Frank; Bell R. and Har- 
riet I., the first four of whom are married. Mr. 
Horton has lived in Winona for about forty 
years. As a business man he has met with un- 
common success, is a man of warm friendships, 
and as a citizen commands the greatest esteem 
of the community for whose welfare he has so 
constantly and fruitfully labored. 



HENRY W. LAMBERTON. 

The family name of Lamberton is of pure 
Scottish origin, and, like all of the ancient 
names of Scotland, territorial in its derivation 
and associated with the earliest historic times 
of that country. The name occurs as early as 
the reign of Edgar (1097-1107). John de Lam- 
berton appears on the roll of Scottish nobles 
and others invited to accompany King Edward 
into Flanders, May 24, 1297; and to the letter 
sent by the Scottish barons to the Pope in 1320. 
tlie seal of Alexander de Lamberton is ap- 
pended. Perhaps the most famous one of the 
name in early historic times was William de 
Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews from A. D. 
L298-1328. He was Chancellor of Glasgow in 
1292, and in the charter was called William de 
Lambyrton. He was elected Bishop in Sep 
tember. 1297, and was by Pope Boniface VIII., 
on June 17, 1298, preferred to the episcopate 
of St. Andrews, and is in the papal rescript 
styled "Willemo de Lamberton." He was a 
close friend of Sir William Wallace, whose in- 
fluence in Scotland at that juncture was almost 
unbounded. Lamberton was one of the three 
bishops who crowned King Robert of Bruce, at 
Scone, March 27, 1306. Only by tradition can 
the family name be traced through the long 



33° 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



period intervening between the time of Brace 
and the time of the anti-prelacy agitation in the 
latter part of the Seventeenth Century. Kill- 
ing the latter period the tradition is distinct 
and well defined, that in consequence of the 
religious persecution some members of the fam- 
ily tied to the North of Ireland, clearly indicat- 
ing the affinity between the two branches of 
the family in Scotland and Ireland. Gen. James 
Lamberton, a lineal descendant of Bishop de 
Lamberton, the grandfather of Henry W. Lam- 
berton, of Winona, the subject of our sketch, 
was born in the year 1755. He emigrated, to- 
ward the close of the War of Independence and 
before the definite treaty of peace, and settled 
in the Cumberland valley of Pennsylvania, 
amongst the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, who 
had preceded him there in such great numbers. 
He arrived at Carlisle in the year 17s::. and for 
many years was one of the most successful 
merchants and business men of the Cumber- 
land valley. January 4, 1785, he was 
married to Jane McKeehan, a daughter of 
Alexander McKeehan, who was a North of 
Ireland immigrant and came oyer early in the 
Eighteenth Century. Mr. James Lamberton 
was a conspicuous leader of the Democratic- 
Republican party in Cumberland county, as 
well as prominent in State politics, having 
served two terms in the House of Representa- 
tives. He was also active in reorganizing the 
State Militia, in 17!U, and was commissioned 
on February 10, 170J, as major of the First 
Battalion of Cumberland County Militia, to 
rank as such from July 28, 1792. A contem- 
porary of Mr. Lamberton writing of him says: 

"Descended from an old Scotch family, who 
removed from their own country to the sister 
Kingdom of Ireland, he inherited the same 
fearlessness and determination so eminently 
characteristic of the Covenanters. He emi- 
grated to this country before the close of the 
struggle which resulted in the freedom of the 
Colonies, and from the time he became an 
American citizen, he was ever found amongst 
those who firmly maintained (lie rights of the 
people. His upright character soon secured 
the respect of his fellow-citizens, and he was 
placed in positions in which he was always 
true to his trust. Fearless in the expression of 
his sentiments, and as courageous in the de- 



fense of them, he was awed by no petty con- 
siderations of policy into silence, and though 
so long outliving the allotment of 'three score 
and ten.' he left a reputation unsullied by a 
dishonorable act." 

Maj. Robert Lamberton, son of James, and 
father of Henry \Y. Lamberton, was born 
March 17, 17S7. at Carlisle, was educated at 
Dickinson College, and amongst others had for 
a college mate James Buchanan, later Presi- 
dent of the United Slates, between whom, ever 
after, were the strongesl ties id' friendship. He 
was a student at law. preparing for admission 
to the Cumberland county bar when the last 
war with Great Britain was declared, at which 
time Maj. Robert Lamberton was appointed 
paymaster in the service of the United States. 
for the Pennsylvania forces on the Northern 
frontier. He accompanied the troops to the 
frontier and into Canada. The exposure inci- 
dent to his service there, brought on chronic 
rheumatism, which afflicted him through life 
and ultimately caused his death. On cessation 
of hostilities. Maj. Lamberton returned to Car- 
lisle and engaged in mercantile pursuits, and 
later was appointed postmaster of Carlisle, 
which position he retained for many years. 
April I'd, 1815, Robert Lamberton was married 
to Miss Mary Harkness. daughter id' William 
Harkness, of Cumberland county, who was a 
prominent character and extensive land owner 
in that community. William Harkness was born 
October 1, 17.">!t. in the North of Ireland, and 
when quite young emigrated with his father 
and settled among the Presbyterians in the 
county of Lancaster. Pennsylvania. His wife. 
Priscilla Lytic, whom he married in 1771, was 
of the same Scotch-Irish stock. The Presby- 
terian settlers of the Cumberland valley were 
among the first to actively assert the rights of 
the Colonists in the struggle with Great 
Britain. William Harkness entered the Colo 
nial service as an ensign, and together with 
Mr. Lylle, his brother-in-law. was, among other 
conflicts, at Brandywine and Germantown. 
At the latter place Lytic was killed at his 
side. Maj. Robert Lamberton died at Carlisle. 
August. 9, L852, at the age of sixty-five years. 
His wife survived him many years. She was 
bom in April, 1791, and died at Carlisle De- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



531 



cember 28, 1880, in the ninetieth year of her 
age. In many respects she was a remarkable 
woman. For sixty-three years she had been a 
regular attendant and communicant of the 
First Presbyterian church of Carlisle. Tall 
and comely, of clear, prompt and decided judg- 
ment, of great ability and energy, she permitted 
nothing to swerve her from the path of duty 
and the right. She devoted herself to the care 
and education of her children and to her life 
of Christian duty and example. No infirmity 
of age came upon her. Her physical activity 
and the humor and clearness of her brighi 
mind remained with her until the last. She 
left surviving four sons and two daughters 
— Robert Alexander Lamberton, late presi- 
dent of Lehigh University, now deceased; 
Alfred John Lamberton, a prominent mer- 
chant of Western Minnesota, now deceased; 
Charles Lytic Lamberton, now a resident 
of New York City, and who was during 
his many years' residence in Pennsylvania a 
leading attorney and prominent in public 
affairs, representing his district three years in 
the State Senate; and Henry Wilson Lamber- 
ton, the subject of this sketch. The two 
daughters are Mrs. Mary Lamberton Paulding 
and Miss Annie Graham Lamberton, who 
occupy the homestead at Carlisle. Those dying 
before, her were Col. William Harkness Lam- 
berton and James Finley Lamberton. former 
prothonotary of Cumberland county and father 
of ("apt. Benjamin P. Lamberton of the United 
States Navy. Two daughters, Priscilla and 
Jane, and a young son, Robert C, died many 
years before. It is worthy of note that ('apt. 
Benjamin P. Lamberton, nephew of the subject 
of this sketch, took a prominent part in the late 
war with Spain as Admiral Dewey's Chief of 
Staff in the battle of Manila Bay, May 1, 1898, 
and was soon afterwards captain of the flag- 
ship Olympia. He exhibited exceptional tact 
and courageous skill in carrying out his orders, 
and merited the distinction of being one of the 
ablest officers of the war. On the recommenda- 
tion of the Admiral in his report of the en- 
gagements, Captain Lamberton was promoted 
by advancement of seven numbers in rank for 
bravery in the battle of Manila Bay. Henry 



Wilson Lamberton was born on the Cth day 
of March, A. D. 1831, in Carlisle, Cumberland 
county, Pennsylvania, when- he received his 
early education. He studied law, completed 
his course under the tuition of his brother, 
Robert A. Lamberton, of Harrisburg, and was 
admitted to the bar of Dauphin county, Penn- 
sylvania, in 1852. He engaged in the practice 
of his profession in Franklin, Venango county, 
Pennsylvania, until the spring of 185G, when, 
with his brother-in-law, Hon. Samuel Plumer 
of the Venango county bar, he removed to 
Winona, Minnesota, where they continued the 
practice of law under the firm name of Plumer 
& Lamberton. At the first municipal election 
of the city of Winona in the spring of 1857, Mr. 
Lamberton was elected city attorney, defeat 
ing Hon. Daniel S. Norton, who was later 
elected United States Senator from Minnesota. 
Business engagements caused Mr. Lamberton 
to temporarily remove from Winona to Fari- 
bault and from there to St. Peter, where he 
was residing at the time of the Indian uprising 
and massacre in ls<;2. He was appointed one 
of the Citizen Mounted Marshals to act in con- 
junction with the military department in 
maintaining order, in the discharge of which 
duty he was present at Mankato, De- 
cember 26, 1862, when thirty-eight Sioux 
Indians, who had been condemned to 
death, were executed. Mr. Lamberton re- 
turned to Winona in 1863, where he has since 
resided. In 1866 he was tendered and ac- 
cepted the position of land commissioner of 
the Winona & St. Peter Railroad Company, a 
land grant railroad then under construction 
from Winona and afterwards completed to the 
Big Sioux river in South Dakota. In 1876 the 
Winona & St. Peter Land Company was or- 
ganized and purchased from the owners 
500,0011 acres of the land granted by the United 
States to the Winona & St. Peter Railroad 
< 'ompany. Mr. Lamberton was elected land 
commissioner of the company, which position 
he still holds. In 1868 the Winona Deposit 
Bank was organized and Mr. Lamberton 
elected president, which office is still ably filled 
by him. The success of the bank and the sound 
financial standing of the institution at home 



33 2 



P.IOORAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



and abroad is solely due to the ability of the 
financier at its head. He was elected mayor 
of the city of Winona, in 1881. and reelected 
in 1882. Under his administration the present 
excellent system of water works was con- 
structed and financiered, as well as other 
permanent public improvements. In is'.tt Mr. 
Lamberton was elected president of the 
Winona & Western Railway Company, which 
purchased the railroad extending from 
Winona. Minnesota, to Osage, Iowa, 117 miles, 
and to which has recently been added a branch 
from the main line to Rochester, Minnesota. 
In politics Mr. Lamberton is a Democrat, and 
until recently, since his coming to this State, 
lias always taken an active pari in the coun- 
cils of his party. In 1880 he was elected a 
delegate and attended the Democratic National 
('(invention at Cincinnati, which nominated 
Gen. W. S. Hancock for President. In 1888 
he was chosen chairman of the Democratic 
State Convention, which nominated Hon. E. M. 
Wilson for Governor. In 1893, under a law 
that had just passed, providing for the erection 
of a new State capitol, Governor Nelson ap- 
pointed Mr. Lamberton, without his knowledge, 
one of the board of State Capitol Commission- 
ers, consisting of seven members, one from 
each Congressional district, to cany out the 
provisions of the law, and under whose direc- 
tion the magnificent capitol building is now 
being erected. Mr. Lamberton was married on 
.May t. 1852, to Margaret J. l'lunier, second 
daughter of Arnold l'lunier, of Franklin. 
Venango county, Pennsylvania. Their chil- 
dren are: Arnold Plainer Lamberton, late 
deceased; Charles Harkness Lamberton, Henry 
McClelland Lamberton. Mary Ella Lamberton, 
married to John R. Mitchell, and Margaret 
l'lunier Lamberton, married to C. A. Boalt. 
Hon. Arnold l'lunier, father of Mrs. H. W. 
Lamberton, was elected to represent his dis- 
trict in the Twenty-fifth Congress and again 
elected to the Twenty-seventh Congress. In 
1848 he was elected State treasurer of Penn- 
sylvania. In 1855 he was elected canal com- 
missioner. In 1857, Mr. Buchanan, who had 
been elected President in 1856, selected Mr. 
Plumer as a member of his cabinet and ten- 



dered him the position of Post-Master General, 
which he peremptorily declined. The condition 
of his health at the time being so much im- 
paired as to forbid his undertaking any con- 
tinuous and exacting labors, and his desire to 
retire to private life, were imperative reasons 
for his unwillingness to accept any further 

public office. 

• 

JAMES A. TAWNEY. 

The career of the Hon. James A. Tawney, 
of Winona. Minnesota, is of more than ordinary 
biographical interest. It is a forcible illustra- 
tion of the value of diligent and persevering 
mental application, impelled by a determina- 
tion to succeed. It shows also the value of a 
correct understanding of the experiences of 
the greal mass of people, who toil on farms 
and in shops and factories, and an intelligent 
sympathy with them. John Tawney. the 
great-grandfather of James, moved over from 
Maryland and settled on a farm in the vicinity 
of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in the latter half 
of the last century. He is described as a man of 
upright character and above the ordinary 
in mental capacity. But dying in middle life, 
he left his widow with a very large family, in 
the care of which the estate was consumed. 
Abraham, one of the younger sons, became a 
blacksmith, and located on a farm near by, 
where he established a shop, which was a fea- 
ture of the neighborhood for more than half 
a century. He was known as a man of great 
strength of will, sound understanding and 
honesty. His wife possessed such excellent 
qualities of mind and character as drew to her 
the personal esteem and affection of all who 
knew her. Their oldest son was John E.. the 
father of .lames A. lie also became a black- 
smith, and succeeded his father in the posses 
sion of the shop and the farm. His mental 
and moral qualities needed only proper devel- 
opment to raise him to prominence. Even with 
his lack of other opportunities, by reading, ob- 
servation and study, his mind became well in- 
formed; he took an active interest in all public 
questions, especially those relating to politics, 
morality and religion. lie was a fluent writer 
and a forcible speaker in the country debating 



liKXiRATTIY OF MINNESOTA. 



533 



clubs and other gatherings. He married a 
neighbor's daughter, Miss Sarah Boblitz, an 
excellent young woman of bright intellect and 
a positive and forceful nature. James A. was 
born January 3, 1855. The traditions of his 
schoolboy days have in them much more of 
boyish pranks than of study. He seems to have 
been a robust, jolly, fun-loving youth, who had 
little use for anything taught in the school ex- 
cepl geography. He, too, became a blacksmith, 
and later a machinist. In the summer of 1877 
he came west, looking for work on the way. 
On the first day of August he landed at 
Winona, Minnesota, where he secured a good 
situation as a machinist, and there he has re- 
mained. His new surroundings in this bright, 
active, hustling little city served as an inspira- 
tion. They appealed to his native ambition, 
which, though latent, came into prompt ac- 
tivity. He resolved to make the best use of his 
opportunities. He put himself in the way of 
good society. He attracted the notice of the 
Judge of the District Court — later and for 
many .years on the Supreme Bench — who gave 
him much encouragement. A good voice and 
great fondness for music soon got him into 
church choirs and other musical organizations. 
He became connected with an amateur dra- 
matic club, and his acting on the stage at- 
tracted so much attention that he was urged 
to follow the stage as a profession. But his 
interest had already been awakened in the 
study of law, and he refused to be diverted 
from it. At night when others were asleep, 
he was at his studies. Not the law only, but 
the various branches of an English education, 
were steadily pursued. Thus he spent six 
years, working during the day and studying 
at night, often until long past midnight. 
Finally, quitting the factory, he entered the 
law office of Bentley & Vance, a prominent law 
firm of Winona, and was admitted to the bar 
at Winona July 10, 1882. After this he at- 
tended the law school of the University of 
Wisconsin, until the death of Mr. Bently. 
March 10, 1883. Mr. Bently's death left him 
in possession of a large business. This was his 
great good fortune. Unlike most young at- 
torneys, he was not obliged to wait for busi- 



ness to come. It was already there. The 
question was, "Can he handle it? Will he 
prove equal to his opportunity?" He did; but 
it was by the most intense and trying applica- 
tion. From this on his progress in the pro- 
fession was both rapid and solid. He studied 
his cases. All his powers of insight and 
analysis were brought to bear on each one. He 
studied his books. He made sure of his 
ground; there was no guess work about it. 
And the result was that his success at the bar 
was, to say the least, very gratifying to him- 
self and his friends. From the first he had 
a comfortable income. But in a comparatively 
short time he rose to a higher and more lucra- 
tive grade of practice. His services began to 
be sought by people having large business in- 
terests, and large amounts in litigation; and 
his income became correspondingly large. Few 
young men of this northwestern country had a 
brighter or more promising outlook before 
them, as lawyers, than he had when first nom- 
inated" to Congress. Meanwhile, in 1883, he 
was elected Judge Advocate of the Second 
Minnesota National Guards, and served in that 
capacity until January, 1801, when he was 
made Judge Advocate General on the staff of 
Governor Merriam. In the fall of 1890 he was 
elected State Senator, notwithstanding a large 
Democratic majority in his county. It was 
largely the vote of the farmers and other 
laboring people that did it. They had known 
him as a fellow-laborer, and he had never 
ceased to recognize them with the old familiar- 
ity. To them he was still "Jim Tawney," and 
for "Jim" they voted. In the Senate he was 
a member of the judiciary committee, and took 
a leading part in the legislation of that body. 
For three years — from 1888 to 1891 — he was 
vice-president of the State Republican League, 
and later served for several years on the State 
Central Committee. He was elected to the 
Fifty-third Congress in the fall of 1892, to suc- 
ceed the Hon. W. H. Harries, a Democrat. 
1 icing in the minority, and a new member, his 
opportunities in that Congress were limited. 
His first speech as a member of that body was 
against the repeal of the Federal elections law. 
He made several speeches against the Wilson- 



334 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Gorman tariff law. But his most effective 
work was in connection with the pension leg- 
islation of that Congress, by which a ruling 
was secured that affected some ten thousand 
pensioners, and led to the disbursement of not 
hss than fl,000,000. He was re-elected to the 
Fifty-fourth, Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Con- 
gresses by largely increased majorities. In the 
Fifty-fourth he was appointed by Speaker 
Reed a member of the committee on ways and 
means, and as a member of that committee 
took part in the preparation of the Diugley 
tariff bill and in securing its passage. His 
judicious, energetic and finally successful 
efforts in behalf of what was known as the 
tilled cheese and pure flour bills, attracted at- 
tention all over the country, and prompted the 
dairy and milling interests to place in his 
charge the matter of securing further legisla- 
tion in their interests. In the Fifty-fifth Con 
gress, when the treaty for the annexation of 
Hawaii was pending in the Senate, Congress- 
man Johnston, of Indiana, assailed in the 
House, both the treaty itself and the adminis- 
tration for favoring it. In a few days Mr. 
Tawney replied in a speech that was at once 
a masterly argument and an eloquent presenta- 
tion of the subject. These were the first pub- 
lished speeches on this subject delivered in 
either House. Subsequently, when it became 
known that the two-thirds vote necessary to 
ratify the treaty could not be secured in the 
Senate, the foreign affairs committee of the 
House reported a resolution for annexation. 
Owing to the opposition of the speaker, the 
friends of annexation could not obtain recog- 
nition for its consideration. Mr. Tawney, un- 
willing to see the resolution defeated in that 
way, when it was evident that nearly all the 
Republican members of the House favored it, 
circulated a petition among them, whereby 
each man who signed it, declared in favor of 
annexation, and of the immediate considera- 
tion of the resolution, and also requested the 
chairman of the Republican caucus to call a 
caucus to adopt such means as might be neces- 
sary to secure its consideration. Rut the 
caucus was not called. The speaker, seeing 
the unanimous favor accorded Mr. Tawney's 



proposition on the Republican side of the 
House, agreed to permit the consideration of 
the resolution without a caucus. In the or- 
ganization of the Fifty-sixth Congress few 
Republican representatives took a more con 
spicuous part. In the unique and very brief 
campaign which resulted in the election of 
Hon. I). B. Henderson of Iowa to the speaker- 
ship of the House, Mr. Tawney's movements 
showed him to be an adept in political strategy 
as well as a determined and tireless worker in 
whatever he set his hand to. In this case the 
supreme object was to elect a speaker from 
west of the Mississippi river, and thus secure 
to Western Republicans a more adequate share 
of influence in National legislation and Nation 
al politics. After the close of the speakership 
campaign, Mr. Tawney assisted in completing 
tlie organization of the House in this Congress, 
and among other things, advocated the crea- 
tion of a new committee in the House for the 
preparation and consideration of legislation 
for our new insular possessions. He was in- 
trusted by Speaker Henderson with the work 
of preparing a resolution, amending the rules 
of the House for this purpose. He did so, and 
gave to the new committee its name, "The 
Committee on Insular Affairs." This commit- 
tee is conceded to have but one superior in 
rank and influence, and its jurisdiction covers 
every possible question pertaining to the Gov- 
ernment and administration of public affairs 
in our island possessions, except federal rev- 
enue and appropriations. Owing to the small 
Republican majority in the Fifty-sixth Con- 
gress, Mr. Tawney was selected by the caucus 
of his party as "Whip of the House," a very 
responsible position, last filled during the 
Fifty-first Congress by Hon. James Wilson, 
now Secretary of Agriculture. He was also 
appointed a member of the committee on ways 
and means, and a member of the committee on 
insular affairs. This prominence in committee 
assignments and in the choice of his colleagues 
is another striking evidence of Mr. Tawney's 
industry, of his organizing ability, and of the 
confidence and esteem which he has won in 
such large measure from his associates. Mr. 
Tawney was married on the 19th of December, 




Tht Century PubUstity & Cnymvmy Co Chicago" 



& 



a/< 



1^5. 



«/w-/ 



lUOfiKAl'llY OF MINNESOTA. 



33 1 



1883, to Miss Eminu B. Newell, of Winona, and 
is the father of live strong and handsome chil- 
dren, four sons and one daughter — Everett 
Franklin, .lames Millard, John E., Maud 
Josephine, and William Mitchell. 



ERNST A. GERDTZEN. 

Ernst Adolph Gerdtzen was born at Ham- 
burg, Germany, April 28, 1822. He was edu- 
cated at Kiel and Berlin. After partially 
completing a course in law, he turned his at- 
tention lo civil engineering and architecture, 
and pursued his studies in these branches for 
two years. Coming to the New World, like 
many of the educated young men who turned 
from the unsatisfactory conditions following 
the upheaval of 1S4S. lie lived for a time in 
Wisconsin and later at Davenport, Iowa. In 
185(3 he came to Winona, where he resided un- 
til his death, December 18, 1895. Having taken 
a position in the office of Sargent, Wilson & 
Windoin, he there read law for some time, and 
prepared himself for the vocation for which, 
by a thorough education, sound sense, discreet 
judgment and correct habits, he was eminently 
qualified. At the establishment of the munici- 
pality of Winona, by the charter election in 
1857, he was elected first city recorder, a posi- 
tion which he held for three years. In 1861 he 
was elected clerk of the District Court, and for 
a period of seventeen years he administered the 
affairs of that responsible office with an ability 
and faithfulness alike creditable to himself 
and subservient to the best interests of the 
community. With one exception his was the 
longest tenure of office in Winona county. 
After retiring from public office, Mr. Gerdtzen 
practiced as an attorney, limiting his work to 
the Court of Probate. He acted as adminis- 
trator of a great number of estates, a fact 
which showed the confidence felt in him by the 
people. During all this time he manifested a 
great interest in the common weal, especially 
in the way of educational matters. For many 
years he was one of the directors of the Pub- 
lic Library of Winona, whose interests he 
guarded and fostered with a fatherly love. 



From the first, Mr. Gerdtzen identified himself' 
with the welfare of the German settlers in 
Winona, and was ever ready to aid them by 
word and deed. He was one of the founders 
and chief promoters of the Philharmonic So- 
ciety, whose object was to further and concen- 
trate the intellectual interests of the German 
population. For this society he wrote a con- 
cise but accurate "History of the Germans of 
Winona." In 18C8 Mr. Gerdtzen married Hen- 
rietta Iline, and the union was blessed with a 
sou and a daughter, Gerdt A. and Clara- — the 
wife of B. D. Blair, an attorney of Winona. 
During a long and honorable career as a public 
officer, counsel and administrator, Mr. Gerdt- 
zen enjoyed the public confidence in an unusual 
degree. Retiring and modest, his disposition 
would, superficially, be deemed that of a re- 
cluse, but more intimate intercourse showed 
him to be a delightful scholar, with a mind 
critical, yet broad and tolerant. He was a pub- 
lic spirited citizen, and, what is more, an hon- 
orable man. 



LEONARD PAULLE. 



Leonard Paulle, a prominent manufacturer 
and financier of Minneapolis, is a native of the 
State of New York, and was born at Buffalo 
April 2:5, 1855. His father, Joseph Paulle, was 
a soldier in the army of the first Napoleon 
during the War of 1800. He was a manufac- 
turer of silk at Bavaria, Germany, while 
living in Europe, but in 1854 he abandoned 
that occupation, and emigrated from Ba- 
varia, with his wife and three children, 
to America, selecting Buffalo, New York, 
as his new home. Here he engaged in 
the dry goods trade, at which he was quite 
successful, and in which lie spent a large share 
of his life. During the War of the Rebellion, 
he offered his services to the Union cause, but 
on account of his age was not accepted. In 
1SG9 he removed to St. Paul, Minnesota. He 
did not engage in any business here, but re- 
turned to Buffalo, three years later,- dying in 
that city in 1872, when our subject was only 
fourteen years of age. Although he had reached 



3tf 



BIUGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



the extreme age of ninety-six at the time of his 
death, lie was remarkably well preserved, and 
straight as an arrow. While in this country, 
nine more children were born to him, of which 
three only are living at the present time, viz., 
Joseph and Leonard Paulle, and Mrs. Mary 
Pfiffer. Leonard obtained his early education 
in the public schools of Buffalo, attending them 
up to the age of twelve. Being then obliged 
to make his own way in the world, he deter- 
mined to learn a trade. He was interested in 
cabinet work, and became thoroughly compe- 
tent in this line, spending two years and a half 
in becoming proficient. He afterwards went 
to Minneapolis, in 1872, and was employed as 
foreman by .Jesse C'opeland & Son, manufactur- 
ers of store and office fixtures. In 1873 he en- 
gaged in the manufacture of show cases and 
store fixtures on his own account, remaining 
in this occupation to the present time. Mr. 
Paulle started in life with no capital but his 
native energy and force, and has succeeded in 
building up a large trade in manufacturing all 
sorts of store and office fixtures. He has been 
enabled to do this by giving close attention to 
details and by his uprightness and honesty in 
business. He employs a large force of men, 
and his trade extends through the greater part 
of the Northwest. Mr. Paulle is a Mason of 
the Thirty-second degree. Though he has al- 
ways been a Republican, he voted for Governor 
bind. He believes in men more than party. In 
1898 Mr. Paulle was elected president of the 
Minneapolis Fire and Marine Insurance Com- 
pany. He had served on the board of directors 
a year before this. He has been a director of 
the Germania Bank since its organization in 
is'.it. lie has been quite an extensive dealer in 
real estate, and built a number of residences 
and business blocks in Minneapolis. He is a 
member of Governor Lind's staff, appointed in 
August. 1899, with the rank of colonel. Mr. 
Paulle has always taken an interest in matters 
of public moment, and has aided many a 
worthy enterprise conducive to the growth of 
his city. Mr. Paulle enjoys excellent health, 
which, combined with a large amount of en- 
ergy and push, give promise of a long and suc- 
cessful life. 



ROBERT R. UDELL. 

Robert Ransom Udell, of Minneapolis, Min- 
nesota, was born at Newark, Wayne county, 
New York, November 28, 1850. He is the son 
of -Jesse B. and Maria II. (Ballou) Udell. Both 
the Odells and Ballous are old eastern families. 
The former having taken root in Westchester 
county. New York, about 1690, while the orig- 
inal settler on the maternal side, Maturin Bal- 
lou, emigrated to America half a century ear- 
lier. Ethan Allen, of Revolutionary fame, was 
an ancestor of Mr. Udell on his father's side, 
and his grandfather, Joseph Warren Udell, was 
principal of the Troy Academy. To his grand- 
mother, nee Susanna Ballon, of Richmond. 
New Hampshire, belonged the distinction of 
having been chosen as a representative of the 
Granite State, to the funeral of George Wash- 
ington, in December, 1799. Mr. Odell is a 
fourth cousin of President .James A. Garfield, 
the maiden name of Mr. Garfield's mother hav- 
ing been Eliza Ballou. The subject of this 
sketch grew up on his father's thrifty farm in 
Newark, attending the common schools of the 
town, and later, the Newark free school and 
academy. After finishing at the academy, he 
read law with Senator Stephen K. Williams, 
of Newark, and was admitted to the bar of 
New York at Syracuse, January 8, 1875. In 
the following September, at Utica, New York, 
he gained admittance to practice before the 
United States Circuit Court, in order to bring 
an action in that court in behalf of the second 
mortgage bondholders of the S. P. & S. R. R. 
This case, which involved the sum of $125,000, 
was conducted by Mr. Odell to a happy adjust- 
ment of all existing differences. Early in Gc- 
tober, 1881, Mr. Udell and a friend, Frank F. 
Davis, came with their families to Minnesota 
and located at Minneapolis, the two young men 
at that time becoming associated for the joint 
practice of the law. This partnership was dis' 
solved April 1, 1882, and soon afterwards Mr. 
Odell formed a second, with the late Edward 
A. Campbell, which continued for over four 
years. Among the important litigation with 
which ilr. Odell has been connected during his 
long term of practice in Minnesota may be 




The Century Publishing & fiymvtnp Co Chicaner 



SSZ^7. /2t^*<Z^cP^~*-^~*-^7 



ISIOORAI'IIY OF .MINNESOTA. 



66/ 



mentioned the Forest Heights rase, calling for 
redress from excessive taxation; also the crim- 
inal ease of tile State vs. Claus A. Blizt, in 
which lie was successfully retained by the de- 
fendant, who was saved from the gallows, and 
his aid to the authorities resulted in the exe- 
cution of the real criminal, Harry T. Hayward. 
On December ."., 1881, -Mr. Odell was ap- 
pointed United States Commissioner, which 
office he tilled throughout its existence, it be- 
ing abolished by act of Congress June 30, 1S!)7. 
In the memorable census struggle of 1890 be- 
tween .Minneapolis and St. Paul Mr. Odell 
played a conspicuous and creditable part in his 
capacity of commissioner. St. Paul threw 
down the gauntlet by swearing out warrants 
against Minneapolis enumerators, before one 
of its own commissioners. This action natur- 
ally incensed the sister city, and resulted in the 
transfer of certain cases before a commissioner 
at Winona, .Minnesota. The fight began in ear- 
nest when John Campbell, deputy United 
States marshal, gathered in about a score of 
prisoners, whom he brought before Commis- 
sioner Odell, returning the warrants to him. 
These captives were released by Mr. Odell 
upon heavy bail, backed in each case by promi- 
nent citizens of Minneapolis. For twenty days 
and more the war raged in this impromptu 
court, where the best legal talent of the twin 
cilies was arrayed as hostile forces. Riot and 
general disgrace became imminent ; but, al- 
though wholly loyal to Minneapolis, Commis- 
sioner Odell retained a clear sense of official 
duty, and by his determined action and sang 
froid held the antagonists from each other's 
throats until a settlement of the whole matter 
could be consummated. Until recent years 
Mr. Odell was a Republican. He was a per- 
sonal friend of .lames G. Blaine, but was ab- 
sent in England during the Presidential con- 
vention of 1802, and the news of Mr. Blaine's 
defeat was brought to him in the office of the 
London Times. Since 1S02 he has been a Dem- 
ocrat. September 5, 1876, at Newark, New 
York, Mr. Odell was married to Carrie C. Vos- 
baugh. Their two living children are: Clinton 
M., who has just attained his majority, and is 
now in the University of Minnesota, and 



Corinne V., aged ten. Our subject has been 
called the lawyer poet. His "Ode to the Pells" 
is, perhaps, his best-known production, having 
been copied by the press all over the country, 
lie also wrote the ode of dedication to the new 
court house and city hall of Minneapolis. .Mr. 
Odell is a member of Minnehaha Lodge 165, 
A. F. ^ A. M. 



THOMAS M( )NT(1( >MERY. 

Major Thomas Montgomery, a well-known 
pioneer citizen, soldier and public official of 
St. Paul, and very eminent in symbolic Ma- 
sonry, was born at Mountcharles, Donegal 
county, Ireland, June 1, 1841. His father. Rev. 
Alexander Montgomery, was a local preacher 
of the Wesleyan Methodist church in the north 
of Ireland. His mother, whose maiden name 
was Margaret Paskin, was a member of a 
prominent north of Ireland family. They were 
married in Mountcharles, August 4, 1S40, and 
a few months after his father came to Mon- 
treal, teaching school and preaching in the city 
and vicinity. He established a home in Orms- 
town, where his wife and son joined him in 
September, 1845, and for the following ten 
years pursued his vocation in that place and 
neighborhood. In September. 1S55, he moved 
his family to London, Ontario, and in July, 
1856, to St. Paul. Minnesota, locating soon after 
on some land near Cleveland, Le Sueur county, 
where his son Thomas grew up to early man- 
hood, assisting, with two younger brothers, in 
opening up the farm. He received a good com- 
mon school and practical education, under the 
supervision of his father, who was a man of 
scholarly tastes and of high mental and moral 
character. His mother and father died at 
Cleveland, in 1888 and 1892, respectively. 
Major Montgomery's military title was fairly 
and meritoriously attained. After drilling all 
summer in a company of home guards, he en- 
listed, August 10, 1862, in Company K. Seventh 
Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, and 
was appointed a corporal. In June, 1863, he 
was elected second lieutenant of his company, 
but failed to get his commission, the antici- 



33& 



P.IOORAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



pated vacancy not occurring. He participated 
in the Indian campaigns under General Sibley, 
in Minnesota and Dakota, in 1862 and 1863. In 
September, 1863, he went to St. Louis with his 
regiment, and in January, 1864, was commis- 
sioned by the President first lieutenant in the 
Third Missouri Volunteers of A. 1).. and for a 
time was engaged in mustering in colored 
troops at Benton barracks, St. Louis. For 
nearly three years lie served as captain in the 
Sixty-seventh and Sixty-fifth Regiments of 
United States Colored Infantry at Fort Hud- 
son and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was 
mustered out of the service, at St. Louis, in 
January, 1S(">7. He was brevetted major by the 
President "for faithful and meritorious serv- 
ices during the war." Upon his retirement 
from the army he returned to Minnesota, and 
this State has ever since been his home. From 
April. 1867, to January, 1891, he was engaged 
in the real estate and insurance business at St. 
Peter. In 1891 he erected a home in, and 
moved his family to. Hamline, the well-known 
suburban district of St. Paul, where he has 
since resided. In 1883 he organized, and for 
eight years commanded, A. K. Skaro Post No. 
:57, of the G. A. R. at St. Peter, and for twelve 
years he was chairman of the Department 
Council of Administration of the G. A. R. At 
present he is Chancellor of the Minnesota Com 
mandery of the Loyal Legion. While he has 
never been a politician or an office seeker, 
Major Montgomery has held several public po- 
sitions of honor and responsibility. While he 
resided at St. Peter he was for eighteen years 
a member of the city board of education, serv- 
ing the greater part of the time either as presi- 
dent or treasurer. For twelve years lie was 
city justice. Since he has lived in St. Paul he 
has served four years as a member of the board 
of aldermen, representing the Tenth Ward, 
and for two years as vice-president of the 
board. He has also held many positions of 
trust in the chinch and in several fraternal 
societies. In every position he has filled, as 
well as in every work he has been called upon 
to do. Major Montgomery has always dis- 
charged his duty with great acceptability and 
with the highest degree of efficiency. He is 



plain and unassuming, bu1 his innate purity 
of character and his instinctive and natural 
integrity make him a safe man to trust with 
any responsibility at all times anil under all 
circumstances. Major Montgomery has at- 
tained to prominent distinction in Free Ma- 
sonry. He received tin- Blue Lodge degrees in 
Concord Lodge No. 47, Cleveland, Minnesota, 
in September, 1865, while on leave of absence 
from the army. In 1867 he transferred his 
membership to Nicollet Lodge No. ."i4, at St. 
Peter, and the following year was elected 
junior warden. He served as Master and Sec- 
retary of Nicollet Lodge for several terms, and 
for twelve years was District Deputy Grand 
Master. He was exalted to the Capitular de- 
gree in Blue Earth Chapter No. 7, at Mankato, 
in March, 1873. In April, 1873, he organized 
St. Peter Chapter No. 22, and was High Priest 
of that chapter until July. 1890. He became 
Grand High Priest in 1S79, and represented 
his Grand Chapter at Detroit in 1880, and a1 
nearly every triennial convocation since held. 
For many years he has been president of the 
Grand Convention of Anointed High Priests of 
Minnesota. He is a member of Adoniram 
Council Xo. 5, R. and S. Masters, Minneapolis, 
having received the degrees therein January 
1(1. 1881. He was created a Knight Templar in 
Mankato Commandery No. 4. May S, 1S74, was 
Captain General in 1880 and Eminent Com- 
mander from 1881 to 1885. Passing through 
several minor offices he was installed as Grand 
Commander of Knights Templar of Minnesota 
June 24. 1887, and has since represented Minne- 
sota at nearly every triennial conclave. In 
the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite he re- 
ceived all the degrees up to the thirty second 
from the renowned Brother Albert Pike, in 
1879, and fSSO at Mankato and St. Peter. In 
-Inly, 1880, he assisted in the organization and 
was made Junior Warden of Osiris Lodge of 
Perfection at Mankato. and the same month 
organized and subsequently was for several 
years Venerable Master of Delta Lodge of Per- 
fection at St. Peter. In April, 1880, he was 
appointed to and still holds the office of 
Deputy Inspector General, and in October, 
isss, was elected Knight Commander of the 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



339 



Court of Honor. Upon the death of the vener- 
able ;uk1 honored Grand Secretary, A. T. C. 
Pierson, in November, 1889, Brother Mont- 
gomery — who had been his assistant for twelve 
years — was appointed Grand Secretary of the 
Grand Lodge and Grand Chapter, and Grand 
Recorder of the Grand Commandery in Minne- 
sota, and since then has served most faithfully 
and efficiently in these positions. In 1890 he 
was elected Grand Recorder of the Grand 
Council, and is still in service in this office. 
He is also foreign correspondent for the last 
three named bodies, and is Representative of 
the Grand Lodges of Scotland, Ireland, Colo- 
rado and other Grand bodies. Major Mont- 
gomery was married September 2G, 1867, to 
Miss Sarah A. Purnell, a daughter of Edmund 
Purnell, a merchant of Cambria, Wisconsin. 
Mrs. Montgomery was born in England The 
children of the family are Edmund Alexander, 
of the law firm of Hale & Montgomery, 
Minneapolis; Cora Belle; Dr. Charles Purnell, 
a dentist of St. Paul; Edith May, a teacher in 
the high school. Owatonna; George Damren, 
a student at the State University, late a mem- 
ber of the band of the Thirteenth Minnesota, 
and lately engaged in active service at Manila 
and in the Philippines; Thomas Baskin and 
(■rant. The Major is a member of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal church, is president of the board 
of trustees at Hamline, ami in 1899 was presi- 
dent of the lay electoral conference of his 
church at Northneld. He was Sunday school 
superintendent at St. Peter for nearly fourteen 
years. Tn company with his wife he spent 
three months, in 1897, in making a tour 
through Ireland, Scotland and England, also 
spending a week in Paris, France. 



PAUL H. GOT/IAN. 



Paul Harris Gotzian, secretary and treas 
urer of the old and well-known shoe manufac- 
turing firm of C. Gotzian & Company, of St. 
Paul, and late lieutenant colonel of the Fif- 
teenth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, is a 
Minnesotian, born and bred. He was born in 
St. Paul. June 19, 1866. His father was Conrad 



Gotzian, a native of Germany, born near Leip 
zig, in 1835, who came to the United States at 
the age of seventeen, and three years later, in 
1855, located in St. Paul. In 1857 he estab- 
lished what later became the great shoe manu- 
factory which has so long borne his name. 
After a long, active and prominent business 
career, he died in 1887, and there is no name 
more honored in the annals of St. Paul than 
that of Conrad Gotzian. His wife, the mother 
of Colonel Gotzian, was Caroline Busse, and 
she was born in Cincinnati, of German parent- 
age. They had six children, the subject of this 
sketch being the only son. Colonel Gotzian's 
education was received first in the St. Paul 
public schools, and completed in the Shattuck 
Military Academy, Faribault, Minnesota, and 
at Phillips Exeter Academy (New Hampshire), 
heaving school at the age of nineteen, he began 
his business career as an office clerk, and after 
the death of his father he became one of the 
stock men, to acquire the practical knowledge 
so essential to success in any business. In 
1892 he was put in charge of the offices and all 
pertaining thereto. In 1888 he was elected 
secretary of Cotzian & Company, and, in 1892, 
was also made treasurer. He has held this 
dual position ever since, even during his term 
of military service. He has discharged his 
duties efficiently, and his connection with the 
affairs of the great corporation is most influen- 
tial. In duly. 1898, during the war with Spain, 
he left his business and entered the volunteer 
service. Upon the organization of the Fif- 
teenth Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, he was 
commissioned senior major of the regiment, 
and went with it to Meadville, Pennsylvania, 
en route, as was presumed, to Cuba, or some- 
where where fighting was to be done. During 
his service he was promoted to Lieutenant 
Colonel, and served with the Fifteenth for nine 
months, chiefly at Augusta, Georgia, until it 
was mustered out, in 189!>. Upon his discharge 
he resumed his former duties as secretary and 
treasurer of the company with which he had 
been so long connected. Colonel Gotzian has 
attained to the thirty-second degree in Free 
Masonry, and is a member of several other 
orders, in whose affairs he takes great interest. 



34Q 



BIOGRAPHY <)F MINNESOTA. 



He is a decided Republican in liis political 
views, but lias never been a candidate for office, 
lie was married, in 1889, to .Miss Emma Nelson 
I'.eebe, and has one son, named Conrad Got- 
zian, tor ins honored paternal grandfather. 



JOHN MARTIN. 



Among the veteran citizens of Minneapolis 
who, during the last half century, have been 
large contributors to the development of that 
city, must lie counted Captain John Martin, 
almost equally well known in connection with 
two of the leading industries of the State of 
Minnesota — lumber and milling. Captain Mar- 
tin was born Augusl 18, 1820, at IVacham. 
Caledonia county, Vermont, the son of Eliphe- 
let and Martha (Hoit) Martin. Both the Mar- 
tins and the Hoits are Eastern families, whose 
residence in America dates back to the days 
of the Pilgrim Fathers. The parents of John 
Martin, coming in early life from Connecticut, 
sen led upon a farm in Peacham, where they 
reared a large family of children; and thosewho 
realize that farming in rocky New England, 
however picturesque, means a maximum of 
labor with a minimum of returns, will readily 
appreciate that the subject of this sketch, as 
one of ten children to be provided for. started 
in life with no very brilliant material pros- 
pects. While still a child he began to take a 
part in the work of the farm, and his educa- 
tional privileges were limited to winter terms 
a I the school of the district in which he lived. 
A I a very early age he began to dream of larger 
opportunities, and while yet lacking two years 
id' his majority, he purchased his time of his 
father and left home to seek an independent 
livelihood, and, perchance, a fortune. His first 
position was that of fireman of a steamboat 
on the Connecticut river, from which humble 
post he rose to be captain of the boat. Alter 
five years of navigation on the Connecticut, 
the boat which he commanded was transferred 
to other proprietorship and sailed for the 
South, Captain Martin going with her; and his 
next the years were passed upon the Neuse 
river in North Carolina, as captain, successive 



]y, of the steamboats "Wayne" and "Johnson." 
These boats were employed in general com- 
merce, taking cargoes of raw turpentine, resin 
and other farm products down the river, and 
bringing back shipments of varied merchan- 
dise. During all this time the young captain 
was laying by a goodly margin from his earn- 
ings, which were later carefully invested, 
mostly in farm lands in his native State. 
About twelve years were spent in steainboat- 
ing, then, after a short sojourn at Peacham, he 
set out for the Pacific coast, allured, as were 
so many at that time, by visions of gold. Tak- 
ing the Isthmus route, he arrived in California 
early in 1850, and began operations at once in 
a placer mine on the American river. He 
worked hard for a year, then disposed of his 
mine and left the diggings for home, with his 
well-earned treasure of gold dust. Hut he had 
acquired a taste for adventure and enterprise 
which would not leave him long content with 
the monotony of farm life, and two years later 
he journeyed as far as the Middle West and 
explored Illinois and Iowa, then, attracted by 
the huge rafts of logs on the Mississippi, he 
went up the river, tracing the lumber to its 
source at St. Anthony. Almost at the first 
glance of his experienced eye over the ground, 
he comprehended the splendid possibilities of 
the location for the extensive development of 
the lumber industry, and determined to make 
it his future home. Accordingly, he returned 
to the East, sold his property in Vermont, 
and, early in 1X55, became a permanent resi 
dent of St. Anthony — now the beautiful city 
of Minneapolis. In 1856 a stock company was 
organized for navigating the upper Mississippi, 
capitalized at $30,000. Captain Martin took 
an active interest in the enterprise, became a 
stockholder, and subsequently served as cap- 
tain of the steamer "Falls City." About this 
time he began operations in the pine groves 
along Rum river, purchasing new tracts of 
timber land and stumpage as he required them 
lor working. His enterprise so prospered that 
he was soon erecting saw-mills and opening 
lumber yards — the mills at Mission Creek ami 
the yards at St. Paul — and in due time had his 
business incorporated under the style of the 









spw 





^n/^ 



Z rcJXUn, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



341 



John Martin Lumber Company. Great as have 
been his achievements in the lumber industry 
of Minnesota, however, Captain Martin has 
played a scarcely less important part in the 
grain and milling business. He formerly held 
a large proprietary interest in the Northwest- 
ern Flour Mills of Minneapolis, and is now 
president of the Northwestern Consolidated 
Milling Company of Minneapolis, whose Ave 
manufactories have an aggregate daily output 
of over ten thousand barrels of flour. This is 
the second largest milling establishment in the 
world, being excelled only by the famous 
Pillsbury-Washburn Company. Captain .Mar 
tin has been effectively interested in extending 
the railroad facilities of the Northwest. He 
served as vice-president and a director of the 
Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie & Atlantic Rail- 
road, and was a vigorous promoter of the 
Minneapolis & Pacific enterprise, which, result- 
ing in a mole direct route to the Atlantic coast, 
and successfully rivaling certain arbitrary 
railroad combinations, reacted very favorably 
upon the milling business of Minneapolis, and. 
incidentally, upon his individual interests. He 
was also instrumental in instituting the Minne- 
apolis & St. Louis Railroad, of which he was 
made vice-president. Captain Martin's con- 
nection with the financial business of Minne- 
apolis, too, is a longstanding and honorable 
one. He has been president of the First 
National Bank since 1S!)4. having been an ac- 
tive member of its directory ever since its 
organization — a period of some thirty-five 
years. Captain Martin was married, in 1849, 
to Jane B. Giltillan. Miss Gilfillan, like him- 
self, was a native of Peacham, Vermont, and 
their marriage was celebrated during his home 
visit just previous to his departure for Cali- 
fornia. Mrs. Martin, who died in 1886, was an 
estimable lady, who had done full credit to her 
high social position by the side of her promi- 
nent and influential husband; yet the Martins 
took their prosperity modestly, preferring the 
simple home comforts to display. A daughter 
—Mis. Jean M. Brown, of Minneapolis — is the 
only child of Captain Martin. The Captain 
has been a loyal Republican since the founda- 
tion of that party; and while he has never 



been a seeker after political preferment, he 
has wielded a powerful influence towards the 
bringing about of such measures as he ap- 
proved. For many years identified with the 
First Congregational church of Minneapolis, 
Captain Martin has been one of its most sub- 
si ant ial supporters, manifesting a lively in- 
terest in its various activities. Alike in the 
church society and in the larger community 
of the city, he has borne himself honorably, 
enjoying the full respect of his fellow-citizens; 
and his share in the upbuilding of his home 
municipality is incalculable. 



JOSEPH H. THOMPSON. 

•foseph Hayes Thompson, of Minneapolis, 
was born August IT, 1834, at South Ber- 
wick, Maine. His parents were Daniel G. 
and Dorcas Allen (Hayes) Thompson. Dan- 
iel G. Thompson was a prosperous farmer, 
and our subject, during his early years, 
assisted his father in the farm work. When 
Joseph was nine years of age, the fam 
ily left their home at South Berwick and 
took up their residence on a farm in North 
Yarmouth, Maine. Here he obtained his edu- 
cation at tlie district school, working on the 
faun when not attending to his studies. After 
the completion of his school life at North Yar- 
mouth, he clerked in the general store of 
George S. Farnsworth at North Bridgeton, 
Maine. He remained with Mr. Farnsworth for 
about a year, and then entered the employ of 
Nathaniel Osgood, of the same place, learning 
the tailor's trade with him. During the winter 
of L851, while at North Bridgeton, he attended 
the academy at that place. In the summer of 
is."!.", he obtained employment as clerk and cut- 
ler for Richard Bosworth, a merchant tailor, 
of Augusta, Maine. Two years later, in March, 
is.")."), he entered the employ of -I. IT. and F. W. 
Chisam, of the same town and in the same 
capacity. During the winter of 1856 he de- 
cided lo move west, and after looking awhile 
for a location in which to start business on his 
own account, at length determined to settle in 
Minneapolis. He opened a tailoring establish 



34-2 



UIOCKAI'IIY (IF MINNESOTA. 



incut there in tlie winter of L856-57, having the 
whole field to himself, as there was no other 
tailor in that locality. Mr. Thompson has been 
engaged in the same line of business from that 
time U]) to the present, and enjoys an extensive 
patronage. Not only was he the first tailor in 
Minneapolis, lint he also ran the first express 
office in that city, and the first tickets to the 
East by steamboats and by rail from Prairie 
du Chien were sold by him. In August of 18C2 
he participated as a volunteer in ('apt. Anson 
Northrup's company, in the expedition for the 
rescue of the settlers of Fort Ridgely. Mr. 
Thompson is Republican in his political sym- 
pathies and has rendered his party valuable 
service. Fur several years he held the office 
of supervisor of the town of .Minneapolis, and 
also served his ward as an alderman. He cast 
his first vote for John < '. Fremont in 1856, and 
during September of that year, he took the 
three degrees in Ancient Free and Accepted 
.Masonry, in Bethlehem Lodge, No. 35, jurisdic- 
tion of Maine. The following November he 
was honored with the office of senior deacon of 
the lodge. He lias held other important offices 
as a Mason, and has been for the past twenty- 
one years, and still is, grand treasurer of that 
fraternity. Mr. Thompson is prominent and 
influential in the business circles of Minne- 
apolis and is a large property owner, lie is a 
director of the Security of Minneapolis and of 
the Minneapolis Plow Works, and a stock- 
holder in the Northwestern Knitting Works, 
lie was for many years a director in the Minne- 
sota Loan & Trust Company, and has been 
prominently identified in many other public 
enterprises. He was united in marriage on the 
isth of September, 1860, to Miss Ellen M. 
Gould, at Minneapolis. Mr. and Mrs. Thomp- 
son have had three children, of whom only one 
survives, Mrs. E. 1'. Capen, of Minneapolis. 



HIUAM T. HORTON. 



Hiram Terry Horton. of Rochester, one of 
the pioneer settlers of Minnesota, was born 
April 27, 1811, at Norway, Herkimer county, 
New York. His parents were Luther and 



Clarissa (Forsyth) lloiton, both of English ex- 
traction. Luther Horton, a lineal descendant 
of Barnabas Horton. of Leicestershire, Eng- 
land, was born and reared on Lonji Island. He 
was a carpenter by trade, but also followed 
agricultural pursuits. He was a soldier of the 
war of 1812. Barnabas Horton was the first 
American representative of the family, he hav- 
ing crossed to Hampton, Massachusetts, about 
1636. He afterwards lived for a short time in 
Connecticut, and was one of (he twelve original 
freeholders from that State who sailed to Long 
Island in 1640 and founded the town of 
Southold. These men were the first civilized 
persons to attempt settlement of the east end 
of Long Island. The Porsyths, maternal an- 
cestors of Hiram T. Horton. were among the 
very early settlers of this country. His mother, 
Clarissa, was the daughter of William For- 
syth, a patriot of the Revolution, who. as a 
young man. lived at Williamstow n, Massachu- 
setts. The mother of Clarissa, whose maiden 
name was Martha Giles, was a daughter of 
Jonathan (liles. of Williamstown, who was a 
soldier in both the Colonial and Revolutionary 
wars. The subject of this sketch attended the 
common schools of his native town of Norway 
until prepared for higher study. He then took 
a course at the academy of < Jamden, New York. 
As a boy. Mr. Horton displayed a natural taste 
for mechanics, and before coming of age he 
was actively engaged in business with his 
father. Thus he early acquired experience of 
men and affairs, and deciding to launch out 
in independent business, he came west as far 
as Ohio in 1833, and established himself as a 
contractor and builder at Plainesville. In 1837 
he removed to Illinois, and for the next four 
years he lived on the bank of the Rock river, 
about twelve miles below Rockford. Among 
his business ventures during this period 
was buying stock in the southern part 
of the State, and marketing it in the vicinity 
of Rockford; also buying and shipping produce 
by tlatboat down the Rock river for the St. 
Louis market. In 1841, on account of the prev- 
alence of ague, by which nearly all the in- 
habitants of that region were prostrated, he 
decided to return to Norway. New York. Eere 



*%* 




J& 



-£- — <^-i^K_xy Pt-~0~^4>-i>—L. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



343 



he remained about sixteen years, principally 
engaged in fanning, in which he was fairly 
successful. In 1856 Mr. Hortou first came to 
Minnesota, and in 1858 he located permanently 
at Rochester, where he has been engaged in 
the real estate business ever since, and in spile 
of his eighty-eight years, he is still active and 
able to supervise his business affairs, in which 
he has been uniformly successful. Mr. Horton 
has belonged to the Republican party since its 
organization, though in his early voting days 
he was an active member of the Free Soil party. 
He has never been an aspirant for political 
distinction, but in the years preceding the 
Civil War, he was, from the first, an aggressive 
factor in the anti-slavery movement. No sub- 
sequent political issue has ever so stirred his 
sympathies and zeal. Mr. Horton was married 
November 28, 1832, to Mary Hurd, of Norway, 
New York. They are the parents of a daugh- 
ter, Mrs. Mary E. Coon, of Rochester, Minne- 
sota, and a son, Horace E. Horton, who is also 
married and lives in Chicago. The elder Mrs. 
Horton, the wife of our subject, is still living 
at the advanced age of ninety two years, and 
her faculties are so well preserved that she 
has a distinct recollection of incidents of the 
War of 1812-15. Mr. Horton is a man of strong 
personality and great mental force, and in every 
community where he has lived, he has been 
recognized as a leader of men, and a man of 
affairs. He is a familiar figure in the city with 
whose activities and progressive enterprise he 
has been associated for over forty years. 



GEORGE F. UMLAND. 

George F. Umland, of St. Paul, is a native of 
Germany, born in the old Kingdom of Han- 
over, October 1, 185:?. His parents, Clans and 
Catherina (Buck) Umland, natives of Hanover, 
also, were persons of education and conse- 
quence, both of whom followed the vocation of 
school teaching. They had ten children, near- 
ly all sons, and George F. was both the young- 
est child and the eighth son. Although himself 
quite innocent of having won this distinction, 



it nevertheless won for him the special favor 

of G ge V., the blind king of Hanover, who 

became his god-father, bestowing upon him 
several of the royal names. The full name of 
our subject is, accordingly: George Frederick 
Alexander Charles Ernest August Finland — a 
somewhat lengthy but thoroughly authentic 
appellation. Nor was it the king's design to 
bestow upon his godchild only a name. His 
royal patronage was intended to include a col- 
legiate course in the University of Hanover, 
had not his plans been defeated by those of 
Prince Bismarck. While young Umland was 
growing up, Bismarck was gathering in, one 
after another, the smaller kingdoms of Ger- 
many, thus unifying an empire for William, 
the "old Emperor;" and although King George 
protested stoutly, preferring an alliance with 
Austria, if alliance there must be, Hanover 
was taken, and, together with most of the other 
small, independent realms of Germany, became 
incorporated into Prussia. This rendered King- 
George unable to fulfill his contract with his 
namesake, whose common school education 
w'as, in consequence, supplemented, not by 
an university course, but by private instruc- 
tion from his elder brothers, several of whom 
were school teachers. At eighteen years of 
age the young man left his home to seek a 
fortune for himself. Crossing to America, he 
landed at New York on July 30, 1871. But he 
had relished his taste of ocean life, and, engag- 
ing with a sea-faring crew, he spent two years 
before the mast. He came to Minnesota in 
1ST:'., locating at St. Paul, where he was em- 
ployed for the next six years, at first in a book- 
keeping position, and subsequently as traveling 
salesman. In 1879 he moved to Rush City, 
Minnesota, where he invested in a drug busi- 
ness, operating it until the spring of 18S7, 
when he returned to St. Paul. Here he pur- 
chased a finely equipped drug store, of which 
he has been the successful proprietor to the 
present time. In politics Mr. Umland has al- 
ways been identified with the Democratic 
party; yet, though tenaciously adhering to his 
opinions, it is his allegiance to the principles 
of his party, which seem to him almost axio- 
matic truths, not partisan sentiment, which 



344 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



constitutes li i 1 11 a Democrat, and he never hesi- 
tates to "scratch" a ticket which in his judg- 
ment bears the name of an incompetent or 
unscrupulous candidate, hi the National cam- 
paign of L896, he supported McKinley while 
helping to swell the Populist ballot which 
made John Lind Governor of .Minnesota. De- 
cided in his own views, he is tolerant of these 
of others, and is recognized as a liberal-minded 
and exemplary citizen. He has never sought 
public office, bul various offices have sought 
him. While a resident ol' Rush City he served 
on I he board of county commissioners <>f Chi- 
sago county, and as justice of (he peace. He 
was secretary of the board of education; also 
served on the board of equalization and as one 
of the assessors. In the lasl State Legislature 
he rendered efficient service as representative 
of the Thirty-seventh District of Minnesota. 
Mr. Finland belongs to the German order 
known as Sons of Herman, being a valued 
member of that fraternity, as he is of the more 
inclusive community of his home city. A 
prominent physician of St. Paul says of him: 

"In his personal characteristics Mr. Uniland 
is affable and courteous in deportment, de- 
cided bul agreeable in conduct. He is one of 
I he few business men who can say 'no' without 
giving offense. He can be positively polite and 
politely positive, as the occasion demands. In 
the esteem of those who have known him long, 
no man stands higher, and upon his entire life 
record, public and private, there is not a single 
stain." 

On the :'.<lth of .Inly, isTti. exactly live years 
after his first landing in America. Mr. (Jmland 
was married to .Miss Mary Gerke, a native of 
\\ isconsin. Six children were born to them, 
the three of whom new living are: Anna < '., 
Manuehi M. and Mary D. Anna C, the eldest, 
possesses rare beauty of face and equal love- 
liness of character. Her title to an entre to 
i lie best society is unquestioned, and she is 
admired and cherished by a large circle of 
friends. Miss Uniland is a practical young 
lady, withal, being a registered pharmacist, 
and assuming nearly the entire control of her 
father's business. 



JAMES SMITH. 

•lames Smith, an old and honored member 
of the bar of St. Paul, Minnesota, belongs to 
a family which has figured in American his- 
tory for two centuries. In the year 1700 his 
.meat grandfather, ("apt. John Smith of the 
British army, crossed from England and set- 
tled in Augusta county, Virginia. During the 
French and Indian war he was taken prisoner, 
and for a long time was held captive. Captain 
Smith was the father of eight sons, who, 
spite of the military hardships experienced by 
their sire, all became soldiers of the Revolu- 
tionary war and were among the patriots who 
witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis. The 
one of these eight sons with whom, as the 
grandfather of its subject, this sketch is direct- 
ly concerned, was Daniel Smith, distinguished 
both as a military colonel and as a jurist. His 
wife, nee Jane Harrison, was a sister of Col. 
Benjamin Harrison, of Rockingham county, 
Virginia. They settled near the town of Har- 
risonburg, and, according to the custom id' that 
time in Virginia, became slaveholders, (if 
their numerous family, two sons, Benjamin 
and James, feeling the injustice of the institu- 
tion, liberated the slaves, who fell to their 
share, on the death of their father. James, 
who was a minister of the Christian church, 
married the daughter of a prominent clergy- 
man of Virginia — the Rev. John Eniinett. In 
the year 1805 James and Benjamin Smith re- 
moved to Ohio, the latter locating in Fairfield 
county, while James, father of the subject of 
this sketch, settled at Mount Vernon, Knox 
county. Here, on October -'K 1815, the present 
James Smith was born, and here spent his 
childhood and early youth, attending the com- 
mon schools of his native county until he had 
exhausted their resources for instruction. For 
nearly a score of years the elder Smith served 
as clerk of the Common Pleas and Supreme 
Courts of Knox county, and in intervals be- 
tween school terms, James junior, assisted his 
father, and thus acquired a taste and aptitude 
for the law. Deciding upon that profession 
for his life work, he became a student in the 
office of Hon. John T. Brazee, of Lancaster. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



345 



Ohio. He was admitted to the Supreme bar 
of Ohio in 1830, but shortly afterwards was 
attacked by a serious affection of the eyes, 
which for two years rendered it impossible for 
him to read, and which has to this day clung 
to him, though in a milder form. In 1842 Mr. 
Smith and Col. Joseph W. Vance formed a law 
partnership, which, for a period of fourteen 
years did a flourishing business at Mount 
Vernon, Mr. Smith becoming individually 
prominent in municipal affairs, both in his pro- 
fessional capacity and as a citizen. In 1S5G, 
while absent from his native city on a business 
trip to Burlington, Iowa, he visited the region 
of the Northwest and received so favorable an 
impression of the thrifty young city of St. 
Paul, Minnesota, that he determined to locate 
there. Before returning to Ohio he concluded 
arrangements for future mutual practice with 
the Hon. Lafayette Emmett, and the following 
spring brought his family and settled perma- 
nently in St. Paul. In 1802 Mr. Smith severed 
his connection with Mr. Emmett, and formed 
a new firm by associating with himself John 
M. Oilman. The firm of Smith & Oilman was 
succeeded, in 1876, by that of Smith & Egan, 
James J. Egan being junior member. Mr. 
Smith's political affiliations were, first with 
the 'Whigs, then with the Republicans, and 
since 1872 he has been independent in politics. 
In 1861, and again in 1876, he was elected State 
Senator from Ramsey county, and from 1870 
to 1883 he served as Representative from St. 
Paul in the General Assembly of Minnesota. 
During his first year in the Senate, Mr. Smith 
introduced and promoted the passage of a bill 
for incorporating the bake Superior & Missis- 
sippi Railroad Company. In his legal capacity 
he helped to organize the company, and from 
1864 until the year 1S77, when the company 
was succeeded by the St. Paul & Duluth Rail- 
road Company, he served as both attorney and 
a director. Of the new corporation he was 
for four years president, has been counsel, and 
is now advisory counsel, and was a director 
until 1897. Mr. Smith was married January 
18, 1848, to Elizabeth L. Morton, of Mount Ver- 
non, Ohio. She bore him five children, one of 
whom, Elizabeth, is deceased. Mrs. Smith died 



in 1882. The living children of Mr. Smith are: 
Henrietta Clay, Ella Augusta, James Morton 
and Alice Morton, all residents of St. Paul. 
Mr. Smith is now retired from the ranks of St. 
Paul's busy lawyers, leaving his place to 
younger talent; and the best one can wish for 
Mia! place is that it may be tilled always with 
as able and honorable a man. The following 
hearty words are from the lips of one of the 
most prominent jurists of Minnesota: 

"I have known Mr. Smith intimately for 
forty years. When he was in the active prac- 
tice of his profession he was considered one of 
the best lawyers of the State. He was for 
many years in very active and lucrative prac- 
tice, and stood among the foremost members 
of the bar. As a member of the House and 
Senate he was able and aggressive. His in- 
tegrity was never questioned, and on account 
of his character and ability, he stood at the 
very head. He is one of the most generous 
and kind-hearted men that I have ever met. 
1 never knew a man who seemed to get so 
much pleasure out of doing a favor for another 
as James Smith." 



WILLIAM B. DEAN. 



Hon. William Blake Dean, for forty years 
a leading business man of the city of St. Paul, 
and prominently known in commercial, finan- 
cial and political circles throughout the coun- 
try, was born at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in 
1838. His father was William Dean, and the 
maiden name of his mother was Aurelia But- 
ler. On both his paternal and maternal sides 
he is a lineal descendant of soldiers of the 
American Revolution. He was educated in the 
public schools of Pittsburg, and at Bolmar's 
Academy, West Chester, Pennsylvania. Mr. 
Dean came to St. Paul in 1856, when he was 
eighteen years of age. For a considerable time 
after his arrival he was employed as a book- 
keeper for the hardware firm of Nicols & 
Berkey. successors to the late ex-Governor W. 
R. Marshall, who established the house in 1S55. 
In 1860, Mr. Dean acquired Mr. Berkey's in- 
terest, and the firm became Nicols & Dean, by 
which style it has ever since been known. On 
the death of Mr. Nicols — his father-in-law — in 



34 r > 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



1st::, Mr. Dean associated with himself his 
brother-in-law, Mr. J. R. Nicols, and the bouse 
is the oldest, operating under the same name, 
in Minnesota. Ji dues an exclusively whole- 
sale business, has an extensive patronage and 
a valuable reputation. Always a strong char- 
acter, and possessing the confidence of his 
fellow-citizen, Mr. Dean lias been much in 
public life. In St. Paul, he lias been a member 
of the board of education, and of the boards 
of fire and water commissions. He was ap- 
pointed by the President a special commis- 
sioner to examine the portion of the Northern 
Pacific Railroad then under const met ion in 
Idabo. He lias always been a Republican, and 
taken a somewhat prominenl pari in politics, 
and, in 1884, he was one of the Minnesota 
Presidential electors on the Blaine and Logan 
ticket. In 1800 he was elected to the Slate 
Senate from the Twenty-seventh Senatorial 
District, then composed of the Seventh and 
Eighth wards of St. Paul. He was nominated 
on the Republican, the Democratic and the 
Citizen's tickets, and elected without opposi- 
tion. His term lasted four years, and lie de- 
clined a re-election. In the Legislature. Mr. 
Dean performed invaluable service for his city 
and State. He was influential in securing cer- 
tain important amendments to the city charter 
of St. Paul, and he distinguished himself in 
effecting the passage of the bill for the erec- 
tion of the new State capitol building. He 
was the Ramsey county member of the com- 
mittee to which the whole matter was referred 
by the Senate; wrote the majority report in 
favor of the new capitol, and he was the author 
of the bill as it was substantially and finally 
passed. For many years. Mr. Dean has been 
interested in the subject of reforming the 
National currency under a scientific system 
and upon a solid basis. The St. Paul Chamber 
of Commerce made him a delegate to the In- 
dianapolis Monetary Convention of 1897. 
Upon the organization of the convention — of 
which Mr. H. H. Hanna was chairman — Mr. 
Dean was elected as a member of the executive 
committee. His associates on the committee 
were so impressed with his thorough knowl- 
edge of the subject, that they made him a 



member of the Monetary Commission, although 

this distinction came against his earnest pro- 
test. The report of the commission, in the 
preparation of which Mr. Dean assisted, is now 
accepted as a standard authority on the sub- 
jects of standards, currency and banking. Mr. 
I >ean has substantial conned ions with the gen- 
eral business interests of St. Paul. He is a 
director of the Second National and the State 
Savings Banks, and is also a director in the 
Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Rail- 
way. He is a member of the Chamber of 
Commerce and of the Jobbers' Union, and is 
a trustee of Oakland Cemetery. He also be- 
longs to the Minnesota and the Commercial 
clubs, and is a member of the Presbyterian 
church. He was married in I860 to Miss Mary 
C. Nicols, a daughter of John Nicols, of St. 
Paul, with whom he was so long associated in 
business. Mr. and Mrs. Dean have eight chil- 
dren, six daughters and two sons. 



DAVID C. SHEPARD. 

David Chauncey Shepard, of St. Paul, the 
well-known Northwestern railroad builder, 
was born on a farm near the village of Geneseo, 
Livingston county, New York. February 20, 
1828. His father was David Shepard. of Col- 
chester, and before her marriage his mother 
was Dolly Olmstead Foote, of Marlborough, 
Connecticut. His grandparents were Cor- 
nelius Shepard and Sarah Louise Skinner, and 
Roger Foote and Eunice Bulkier, and he comes 
of New England ancestry. He was educated in 
the district schools, at Temple Hill Academy, 
Geneseo, and at Brockport Collegiate Insti- 
tute, New York. In 1847, when but nineteen 
years of age, he was appointed by Governor 
Young, of New York, in the engineer corps 
which completed the Genesee Valley Canal, 
from Sonyea to Olean, and was in this service 
as assistant engineer and draughtsman until 
in the spring of 1851. In the summer of 1851 
he was detailed for work on the Erie Canal, 
and located the line of the enlarged canal from 
Port Gibson to Macedon Locks, New York. 
He was then employed in the office of the State 




21 *£> 



« 





\&£, <^5du, 



C*-^ 






BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



347 



engineer at Rochester, where lie remained for 
several months. During the five years men- 
tioned that he had been in the public service 
of the State, his tenure of position and his 
chance for preferment and promotion depended 
upon his "pull" and outside influences, rather 
than upon his ability and general worth. 
He was not satisfied with his condition, and 
resigned in the spring of 1862. For a year 
thereafter he was in the engineering service of 
certain New York railways. His first ex- 
perience in railroad construction, in which he 
subsequently became so distinguished, was in 
building the Canandaigua & Niagara Falls 
Road (now a part of the New York Central), 
from Homeoye to the crossing of the Genesee 
Valley Canal, which work he completed in the 
autumn of 18."j2. In the winter of 1852-3 he 
was engaged as assistant chief engineer in 
surveying new lines of road from Syracuse, 
via Cazenovia and Cherry Valley, to Albany. 
In the spring of 1853, Mr. Shepard went to 
the State of Ohio and entered the service of 
the Cleveland, Zanesville & Cincinnati Rail- 
way. During the following summer he located 
a proposed line of this road, from the Wal- 
honding river to Zanesville. The following 
autumn he became a division engineer of the 
Atlantic & Great Western (now a part of the 
Erie system), and in the spring of 1854 was 
appointed chief engineer of the road, which 
extended from Orangeville, on the eastern 
boundary of Ohio, to Dayton. His health, and 
that of his wife, having become much affected 
while living in the malarial district of the 
Muskingum valley, he resigned in May, 1S56, 
and removed to Wisconsin. He was appointed 
chief engineer of the Milwaukee & Beloit Rail- 
road — which was projected to give the old 
Racine & Mississippi (now "the Milwaukee"! 
a short route from Savannah to Milwaukee. 
The road was graded, but never fully com- 
pleted. Mr. Shepard has been a citizen of 
Minnesota since the year 1S57. In June of that 
year he was appointed chief engineer of the 
old Minnesota & Pacific (now a part of the 
Great Northern), and came to St. Paul, and 
held the position until 18G0. Under his admin- 
istration the line was located from Stillwater 



to It reckon ridge, and from St. Anthony to 
»'row ^Ving, and the grading completed for 
sixty-two and one-half miles, from St. Paul 
toward St. Cloud. Mr. Shepard had the dis- 
tinction in May, 1858, on the line near the 
Catholic cemetery at St. Paul, of turning the 
first sod for a railroad in the State of Minne- 
sota. There were present on the occasion, be- 
sides Mr. Shepard, Richard Dunbar, deceased, 
and Alonzo U. Linton, now of Minneapolis, 
who were the representatives of Selah Cham- 
berlain, the chief contractor for the construc- 
tion. In 1859, when the sixty-two and one-half 
miles of this road, as mentioned, had been 
graded and bridged, the loan of the State's 
credit tailed, and every railway enterprise in 
Minnesota collapsed, and all construction was 
suspended until 18G2. During this period 
Mr. Shepard engaged extensively in purchasing 
and shipping wheat to Milwaukee and Chicago. 
In 18(i."> he was engaged as chief engineer of 
what was then called the Minnesota Central 
Railroad Company, now a part of the Chicago, 
Milwaukee & St. Paul system. From 1863 to 
1N71 he was the chief engineer and superin- 
tendent of all the lines owned and controlled 
by the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Com- 
pany, west of the Mississippi river, including 
the present river division, the Iowa and Minne- 
sota, Iowa and Dakota, and the Hastings and 
Dakota divisions. In 1871 Mr. Shepard began 
his prominent career as a railroad contractor. 
Resigning his position as chief engineer of the 
Milwaukee & St. Paul, he became interested 
as a member of the Northwestern Construc- 
tion Company. Because of his extensive ex- 
perience as a railroad engineer and his 
familiarity with the cost of construction, he 
was made the general manager of the com- 
pany, which was organized to construct the 
Northern Pacific across the State of Minne- 
sota. In 1872 the contract for the construction 
of the Northern Pacific was completed. Mr. 
Shepard then entered into partnership with 
R, B. Langdon and A. H. Linton of Minne- 
apolis. During the succeeding twelve years 
the firm built thousands of miles of railroad. 
The partnership lasted until 1884, the year the 
Chicago, Burlington & Northern Railroad was 



348 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



built. During those rears they executed a 
great many large contracts. The largest single 
contract was for 675 miles of the Canadian 
Pacific Railroad, from Oak Lake to Calgary, 
450 miles of which was constructed by them 
in one season, the entire contract being com- 
pleted in August, 1883. They also built a gnat 
many miles of road for railroad corporations 
in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, as well as 
in Minnesota and Dakota. In 1S84 Mr. 
Shepard formed a new partnership with Mr. 
Peter Siems, Winston Brothers and others, of 
Minneapolis. Every year large contracts were 
executed for nearly every railroad corporation 
in the State of Minnesota and many in adjoin- 
ing States. Among the latter were the Chi- 
cago, Burlington & Northern, from St. Paul 
to Prairie du Chien; several hundred miles for 
the Milwaukee & St. Paul system in Dakota; 
part of the Duluth & Iron Range; the St. Paul, 
Minneapolis & Manitoba; Chicago Great West- 
ern; Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha, 
and others. In 1884 Mr. Shepard began the 
monumental work of his life — the building of 
the Great Northern Railway. With his asso- 
ciate partners, he constructed nearly the entire 
mileage of this great line, including the exten- 
sion from Minot to the Pacific coast, and the 
Seattle and Montana division extending up the 
coast, eighty miles north of Seattle. The ex- 
tension from Minot to Helena was begun in 
1887, and was intrusted to Mr. Shepard and' his 
firm, Messrs. Shepard, Winston & Company. 
The work that was to be completed in 1887 
was to grade five hundred miles of railroad 
to reach Great Falls, to put in the bridging and 
mechanical structures on five hundred and 
thirty miles of continuous railway, and to lay 
and put in good running condition six hundred 
and forty-three miles of rail to reach Helena 
continuously, working from one end onh\ 
Track laying began five miles west of Minot, 
April 1, 1887, and was completed to Helena 
November 18, 1887. It was May 10, before the 
entire force was under employment. The aver- 
age force on the grading was 3,300 teams and 
about S,000 men. From June 10, the progress 
of the grading was very rapid. From the 
mouth of Milk river to Great Falls, a distance 



(if two hundred miles, the work of grading 
was done at an average rate of seven miles a 
day. Writing of this marvelous achievement, 
Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper's Magazine 
for March, 1888, says: "Those who saw this 
army of men and teams spread over the prairie 
and casting up this continental highway, think 
they beheld one of the most striking achieve- 
ments of civilization." During the month of 
August, one hundred and fifteen miles of track 
were laid. October 15, the road was completed 
to Great Falls, and November 18, the track 
was laid to Helena, a distance of ninety-eight 
miles from Great Falls, making a grand total 
of six hundred and forty-three miles, and an 
average rate of track laying for each working 
day of three and one-fourth miles. July 10, 
seven miles and 1,040 feet, and August 9, eight 
miles and sixty feet were laid by the regular 
gang. It is true that no other railroad was 
constructed as rapidly as this, where the work 
was carried on from only one end. Moreover, 
it is very doubtful whether six hundred and 
forty-three miles of continuous track will ever 
be laid again in seven and one-half months, at 
the average rate of three and one-fourth miles 
Iter day for each working day, and by one gang 
of workmen throughout. The last railroad 
building in which Mr. Shepard engaged was 
the extension of the Great Northern from 
Havre, Montana, to the Pacific coast, at 
Everett, Washington, and from Seattle north 
to Fairhaven junction, lie retired from active 
work in 1804. During the twenty-four years 
of his active life as a railway contractor, the 
several firms of which he was a member built 
7,026 miles of railroad, or an average of nearly 
three bundled miles a year. Besides, they 
executed a great number of other contracts, 
fm- the construction of docks, bridges, culverts, 
side! racks, depot grounds, lowering and chang- 
ing grades, etc. The miles of railroad built in 
each State or British province were as follows: 
Iu Ohio, 40; Indiana, 42; Illinois, 217; Iowa, 
859; Missouri, 01; Nebraska, 43; Wisconsin, 
236; Minnesota, 1,452; South Dakota, 950; 
North Dakota, 984; Montana, 898; Idaho,' 80; 
Washington, 439; Canada, Northwest Terri- 
tory and Manitoba, 725; total, 7,026. It is re- 




The Century Publishing & Engraving Co Chicago- 




A, 




BIOGRArHY OF MINNESOTA 



349 



markable, also, that all of his operations have 
been successful and profitable. Upon Ibis 
feature of his work, he has said: 

'•I attribute my success as a contractor 
directly to the knowledge of railroad construc- 
tion, which I acquired during my long ex- 
perience as a civil engineer. In Ibis capacity, 
from the year 1847 to 1871, I learned what it 
cost to construct railroads, and how to 
economically employ labor and material. I 
may add to that reason, industry and dili- 
gence; and perhaps a reputation for promptly 
performing my obligations had something to 
do with my success. I have never taken but 
one losing job, and I did that for good reasons, 
expecting to lose money." 

Mr. Shepard was married, December 24. 1850, 
to Frances Aurelia Parsons, a foster daughter 
of Chauncey and Wealthy Parsons, of Geneseo, 
New York. No other citizen has ever been 
more interested in the welfare of Minnesota 
than Mr. Shepard. He has been not only ac- 
tive and enterprising, but public-spirited, 
liberal, and patriotic, to an eminent degree. It 
ought not to be in bad taste to say that he is 
charitable and sympathetic towards the unfor- 
tunate, and his benefactions in this regard 
have been numerous and large in the aggre- 
gate. His subscription to the New Richmond 
cyclone sufferers in 1899 was $1,000. He is 
plain, frank, and unassuming in manner, an 
entertaining, intelligent talker, and altogether 
an admirable personality. As indicative of 
the career of the man, and especially what he 
has lived to witness here in the Northwest, the 
following extract from a paper written by him- 
self some years since, is of interest: 

"I well remember, when a buy at school, 
reading of the explorations of Hennepin and 
Nicollet and the discovery of the Falls of St. 
Anthony, then 1,200 miles away from me, and 
speculating as to whether I should live to 
penetrate that then wilderness. At twenty- 
nine years of age I came to reside and remain 
almost within sound of the falls, and I have 
witnessed their transformation from a wasted 
force into a mighty aggregation of power, 
driving the machinery of the greatest milling- 
center in the world. 

Again, when in May, 1858, I was lifting 
that first shovelful of sod ever turned on a 



railroad in Minnesota, who could have foretold 
that that little shovelful of dirt was to fruc- 
tify until in forty years Minnesota would have 
0,100 miles of railroad in full operation, and 
a population of 1,800,000. When we seek the 
causes which rendered this great growth pos- 
sible, we find that the railroad graders' outfit, 
tlie steel rail, and the locomotive, as applied 
and directed by the energy of man, are fore- 
most among the moving influences, without 
which the wilderness might yet be unbroken. 
My generation lias seen wonders in all lines 
of invention and in their application to the 
comfort, happiness, and well-being of man- 
kind. Steam, electricity, and the very air we 
breathe have been harnessed and made to do 
the bidding of man in my time. I doubt if any- 
one coming after me can ever witness in his 
generation, the application of so many and 
such wonderful discoveries for the quick trans- 
mission of matter, power, intelligence, and 
sound, as I have had the good fortune and 
happiness to witness and enjoy in mine." 



JOHN M. OILMAN. 



Hon. John M. Oilman, a prominent attorney 
of St. Paul, has been closely identified with the 
history of Minnesota ever since it became a 
State. He was born, September 7, 1824, at 
Calais. Vermont, the son of Dr. John Oilman 
and Ruth (Curtis) Oilman. Both parents were 
natives of New England and of old Puritan 
stock. The father died when bis son John M. 
was only five months old. He was reared on 
a farm and attended I be common school in his 
boyhood, and graduated from Montpelier 
Academy in 1843. After reading law under 
Iliiton & Reed, of Montpelier, he was admitted 
to the bar in 1840. In the same year he re- 
moved to New Lisbon, Ohio, where he prac- 
ticed law for eleven years, also representing 
Columbiana county in the Legislature of Ohio 
during 1849-50. In 1857 he married Miss Anna 
Oornwell, a native of New Lisbon, and removed 
to St. Paul. Here he was first associated with 
James Smith, Jr., and later with W. P. Clough. 
The latter partnership, which was formed in 
ls72, was dissolved when Mr. Clough entered 
the railroad world, and since then Mr. Gilman 
has been practicing alone. As a lawyer he 
was for many years considered by bench and 



35° 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



bar as one of the ablest in the State. He 
argued his cases on purely logical grounds, 
clear, cogent and concise. He would never 
urge a cause that he did not consider just and 
right, and never resorted to any pettifogging 
practices. Strictly honest and upright, he is a 
profound student, thoroughly devoted to his 
profession, quiet and undemonstrative, yet al- 
ways earnest in whatever he does. In political 
life Mr. Gilman was, for many years, a con- 
spicuous figure. Iu 1SG0 he was nominated by 
the Democratic party for Congress, and made 
a remarkable stumping tour with his opponent, 
Hon. William Windom. In 18G4 ho ran against 
Hon. Ignatius Donnelly for the same high posi- 
tion. Although defeated in both instances, his 
canvass was of a character which left its im- 
press upon the people, and he was repeatedly 
elected to the Legislature, in 1865, 1SG7, 18G9, 
and again in 1876. In the campaign of 1870 
he was chosen chairman of the Democratic 
State Central Committee. There are many in- 
teresting incidents in the life of Mr. Oilman, 
no doubt well remembered by those who are 
still living, who were in St. Paul in early days. 
When the Civil war broke out, in 18G1, and 
President Lincoln sent out a call for volun- 
teers, one regiment was asked from Minnesota. 
Public sentiment was pulsating, tremulous, and 
uncertain, and the great question of the day 
was, what the Northern Democrats would do 
or what attitude they would assume. In order 
to tost the sentiment of the people in St. Paul, 
a meeting was called at the capitol grounds to 
consider the raising of a regiment. But the 
real purpose was to test the sentiments of the 
Democrats. Mr. Gilman, together with Earl 
S. Goodrich, then editor of the Pioneer, were 
the first to put their names to the call, and 
Mr. Gilman made a speech in support of Presi- 
dent Lincoln and for the prosecution of the 
war, which he predicted would be continued 
until the last slave had been liberated. His 
remarks at the time were considered extrava- 
gant. Many now living will remember the 
speech well. Thereafter he made many more 
speeches in support of the prosecution of the 
war and the abolishing of slavery. But Mr. 
Gilman became dissatisfied with the ideas ad- 



vanced by the Republican party in the prosecu- 
tion of the war, and accused the party of trying 
to further its own interest. He therefore re- 
turned to the fold of the Democratic party, and 
has maintained his allegiance to the same to 
the present day. He is very pronounced in 
his view r s, and especially on what he terms to 
be the true Jeffersonian Democracy. Perhaps 
the most important event in Mr. Oilman's life 
was his argument before the Supreme Court, 
in 1881, in favor of the constitutionality of the 
Legislative act providing for the adjustment 
of the old Minnesota State railroad bonds. His 
argument in that important case has always 
been regarded by lawyers as one of the best 
ever presented in any court. Of late years, 
Mr. Gilman has not taken any active part in 
the political battles of the State, county or 
city. In April, 1877, he lost his two sons, aged 
eighteen and seventeen respectively, by drown- 
ing in the Mississippi river, and this calamity 
has heavily weighed upon him, as a result of 
which he has sought retirement from profes- 
sional life. It was years before he fully re- 
covered from this shock, but he steadfastly 
declined after that time to enter public life, 
limiting his activity to his law practice. Mrs. 
Gilman died in October, 1895. Two daughters, 
both married and residing in St. Paul, are still 
living, one being married to L. P. Ordway and 
the other to J. P. Elmer, with the latter of 
whom he resides. 



BENJAMIN H. OGDEN. 

Benjamin Harvey Ogden, M. D., of St. Paul, 
was born at Three Rivers, Michigan, February 
11. 1860, the son of Benjamin and Arietta J. 
(Skinner) Ogden. Benjamin Ogden, a native 
of New Jersey, came to Michigan with his 
parents in an early day. married and settled 
at Three Rivers, where he became a prosperous 
farmer. In 1863 he removed with his family 
to Minnesota, locating on a farm near North- 
field, in Rice county. Here he remained until 
his retirement, late in life, when he removed 
to the village of Northfield, and died there in 
1808. The grandfather of Dr. Ogden was Rev. 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



351 



Benjamin Ogden, a distinguished Presbyterian 

divine, a graduate of Princeton College, who 
come to Michigan as a missionary in an early 
day. After several years of faithful service 
in that State, he died there in 1853. The 
Ogdens are of English origin, the first repre- 
sentatives in this country being John Ogden 
and three brothers, who came to America 
about the middle of the Eighteenth Century, 
and settled in Connecticut. John Ogden after- 
wards removed to New Jersey, where he served 
in the war of the Revolution as a private in 
the State troops of New Jersey. It is a matter 
of record in the Ogden genealogy, that John 
Ogden received the coat of arms, called the 
"Ogden Arms," from Charles II. in recognition 
of faithful service in the protection of his 
father, Charles I., from his enemies. Another 
scion of this family and a lineal descendant 
of John Ogden settled in Philadelphia, where 
he attained prominence, as is attested by his 
name being perpetuated in "Ogden street" and 
"Ogden square" in that city. Dr. Ogden's 
mother, Arietta Jane Skinner, was born in 
Canada, but being left an orphan when quite 
young, she came to the United Stales and made 
her home with a brother, John Skinner, who 
was among the early settlers of Valparaiso, 
Indiana. The Skinners have been a prominent 
family in Indiana, and several members are 
still residents of Valparaiso. Mrs. Ogden died 
in the fall of 1SG1, soon after the family re- 
moved to Minnesota. Dr. Ogdeu was reared 
on the home farm, where he acquired those 
habits of industry and economy, which have 
been the solid foundation for the majority of 
our successful business and professional men 
since the Republic was formed. He attended 
the public schools of Northfield, and then took 
a course at Carleton College, located in that 
place. He graduated in 1881 with the degree 
of A. B., and was chosen valedictorian of his 
class. The year following, as a means to an 
end — that of obtaining a thorough medical 
education — he accepted the principalship of a 
graded school, at Stacyville, Iowa. Having 
completed this year's engagement, he went to 
Philadelphia and took a three years' course 
at Hahnemann Medical College. Graduating, 



in 1885, at the head of the class, numbering 
seventy-five, he then served one year as interne 
in the hospital, connected with the same insti- 
tution. In the spring of 18SG, he returned I" 
Minnesota, and located for practice at North- 
field. He had been practicing but six months, 
when his office was destroyed by fire; but what 
was then regarded as a serious disaster seems 
to have been but the appearance of his "lucky 
star." Not being satisfied with the limitations 
of a country town for the exercise of his abil- 
ities, he determined to cast his lot with the 
leaders in his profession in the capital city. 
He accordingly removed to St. Paul, and 
opened an office there in the fall of 1880. Here 
he has since remained, and though still a young- 
man — not yet forty — Dr. Ogden has attained a 
prominence and standing in his profession that 
usually requires a lifetime of patient endeavor. 
Though his practice is general, lie gives special 
attention to obstetrics, including the surgical 
rases incident to this branch of practice. Dr. 
Ogden is Professor of Obstetrics in the Medical 
Department of the University of Minnesota. 
In 189G he was elected president of the Minne- 
sota Stale Homeopathic Institute, and has 
been an active member since he began prac- 
tice. He has been several times elected 
president of the city and county medical so- 
cieties, and is now a member of the medical 
staff of St. Luke's Hospital, also the <'ity and 
County Hospital. Though a Republican, Dr. 
Ogden has never taken an active part in poli- 
tics, and is not a member of any secret society. 
The Doctor and Mrs. Ogden are very much in- 
terested in church and Sunday school work, 
and are both members of the Plymouth Con- 
gregational church. A prominent member of 
the profession, who has known Dr. Ogden in- 
timately since he came to St. Paul, says of him : 

"An acquaintance with Dr. Ogden that dates 
back to his boyhood enables me to know 
and appreciate his personal characteristics. 
The traits prominent in his character are 
singleness and tenacity of purpose and busi- 
ness integrity; these with industry and thrift 
have conspired to make him successful in life. 
Naturally reserved, he has to be known some- 
what intimately in order to have his best 



352 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



traits recognized, and in consequence of this, 
his later years have been crowned with a de- 
gree of success that was not acquired so early 
as by some of a more aggressive disposition. 
His early years were marked with the struggle 
for an education that so often we find to have 
been the lot of the best men in our land. Of 
a modest and genial disposition, Dr. Ogden has 
acquired a social and professional standing 
that commands admiration." 

In 1S89 Dr. Ogden was married to Miss Alice 
E. Warner, daughter of Mr. Lucien Warner, 
a well-known business man of St. Paul. To 
them has been born one son, Warner Ogden, 
aged five. 



WILLIAM II. MAGIE. 

William H. Magie, M. D.. of Duluth, was 
born at Madison, New Jersey, of Scotch 
ancestry on the paternal side and of Ger- 
man ancestry on the side of his mother. His 
father, William II. Magie, Sr., was also a 
native of New Jersey, but in 1S57 removed 
to Henderson county, Illinois, and from 
thence to Chicago, and finally settled at 
State of Kansas, where he died in 18S3. The 
senior W. II. Magie was by occupation, for the 
greater part of his life, a farmer. He was a 
worthy and respected gentleman, active and 
somewhat prominent as a citizen; took an 
earnest interest in political matters, as a strong 
Republican, and served one term in the Kansas 
Legislature. The son was reared to maturity 
in the States of Illinois and Kansas, about half 
of the time on his father's farm. His early 
education was received in the public schools 
of Chicago, which he attended until he was 
about fifteen years of age, and completed by 
an academic course at Abington College, Illi- 
nois. In 1882 he entered the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons at SI. Louis, and 
graduated from that well-known institution 
with the degree of M. D. in 1884. For a short 
time he engaged in the practice of his profes- 
sion in Pittsburg, Kansas. September 10, 
1NS4, he located in Duluth, where he has since 
remained. Dr. Magie has become very success 
fnl in his profession, to which he has always 



been assiduously devoted. He has been a close 
student of medical science and kept himself 
fully informed in its advancement and develop- 
ment; has had large experience in clinics and 
hospital treatments in the prominent institu- 
tions of the country; and these influences, 
added to his natural adaptation, account for 
the uniform success which has attended his ef- 
forts during the fifteen years of his profession- 
al life in the Northwest. He is especially noted 
as a surgeon, but is well known to the medical 
fraternity and the public, as a superior "all 
round" practitioner. He is a member of 
several medical associations — the American, 
the International Association of Railway 
Surgeons, the St. Louis County, and the Minne- 
sota State Medical Societies, and he is surgeon 
to St. Mary's Hospital, Duluth. His profes- 
sional abilities and his personal qualities have 
secured for him a legion of warm, influential 
friends throughout the entire field of his 
labors. Dr. Magie was married at Pittsburg, 
Kansas, January 2, 1S7G, to Miss Josephine 
Shawger, a daughter of Philip Shawger, Esq. 
To the Doctor and Mrs. Magie were born four 
children, two of whom are now living. Mrs. 
Magie died January 12, 1899. 



WILLIAM C. SHERWOOD. 

William C. Sherwood, a well-known business 
man of Duluth and Northeastern Minnesota, 
was born at. Dartford, Greenlake county, Wis- 
consin, October 1, 1853. His father, Hon. John 
( '. Sherwood, was a prominent and honored 
citizen of the State for many years. He was 
born in the State of New York, but in 1846 
removed to Greenlake county, where he resided 
until his death, more than forty years later, or 
in 1887. He was a graduate of Hamilton Col- 
lege, New York, an intelligent Christian gen- 
tleman, a public-spirited citizen, and a man 
of many worthy and noble qualities. Largely 
owing to his individual etforts, the county seal 
of Greenlake county was located at Dartford. 
At an early day he was a member of the State 
board of insane commissioners, and his per 
sonal influence and efforts were most potent 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA 



353 



in accomplishing a great reform in the care of 
the incurably insane, and in the creation of the 
extensive system of charitable institutions in 
Wisconsin. For a long time he conducted a 
large flouring mill, and a woolen factory in 
Greenlake county. He acquired a respectable 
competence, from which he contributed freely 
and liberally to schemes for the benefit of his 
fellow-men. In fact he became noted, if not 
renowned, for the considerable sums he ex- 
pended upon worthy charities and in the 
promotion of laudable enterprises. The sub- 
ject hereof was educated in the public schools 
of Wisconsin, and by a partial course in the 
Rochester (New York) University. After leav- 
ing school lie was for several years bookkeeper 
and teller in the National State Bank of 
La Fayette, Indiana. In 1882 he came to 
Duluth and engaged in the real estate and loan 
business, with which he has been most promi- 
nently identified and is still connected. Mr. 
Sherwood has also been connected with other 
business interests. He was one of the pro- 
moters of the Merchants' National Bank and 
one of its directors from the time of its or- 
ganization until it was absorbed by the First 
National. He has also been connected with 
the iron interests of Northeastern Minnesota. 
He was president of the Monarch Iron Com 
pany during its existence. He was one of the 
founders of the town of Virginia, and mainly 
through his influence the town was laid out. 
At present he is vice-president of the Virginia 
Improvement Company. He is a leading mem- 
ber of the Presbyterian church, has served on 
the board of trustees of the Dubmpie (Iowa) 
Theological Seminary, and for several yens 
was a trustee of McAllister College of St. Paul. 
In Duluth he has been a trustee and secretary 
of the board of the First Presbyterian church, 
and clerk of the church session for many years. 
Mr. Sherwood was married, May 12, 1880, to 
Miss Amelia Jacoby, of Springfield, Illinois. 
Her father, Henry Jacoby, Esq., erected the 
first packing house in Springfield, and had one 
of the finest stock farms in the State of Illinois. 
Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood have had three chil- 
dren, only one of whom is now living, a daugh- 
ter, Mary R. Sherwood. The family home is a 



beautiful residence, located in Glen Avon, 
which stands on a large and ample site, artis- 
tically and attractively improved, and which, 
with its fine lawns, finished terraces and other 
improvements, constitutes one of the most ad- 
mired residences of Duluth. 



JOSEPH SELWOOD. 



As general superintendent of the American 
Mining Company, of Duluth, the subject 
of this sketch is prominently identified with 
one of the important industries of the 
State of Minnesota. And he has well earned 
whatever of honor attaches to his position, 
for he has worked his way up, literally, from 
the bottom of the mine, in whose gloomy 
depths he toiled during many years of his 
earlier life, to his present influential stand- 
ing. Although educated, for the most part, in 
this country, and Americanized by many years 
of earnest citizenship and productive activity, 
Joseph Selwood is an Englishman, born in 
Cornwall December 5, 1840. He emigrated to 
the newer country at a time when the status 
of our mining industries was a very flourishing 
and hopeful one; and, t hough a mere boy, he 
fearlessly entered upon the miner's career, 
with all its possible perils and inevitable hard- 
ships. His earliest experience in the business 
of his choice was gained in the mines at On- 
tonagon, Michigan, where he was employed for 
five years. He then removed to Ishpeming, in 
the same State, where he continued similarly 
(o follow the mining industry for some fifteen 
years. During the year 1S85 he opened the 
Colby mine at Bessemer. He first came to 
.Minnesota in July, 188S, having by this time 
the mining business well in hand. He located 
in Duluth, and opened up the Chandler mine, 
which he operated for a period of five years. 
In 1892, Mr. Selwood retired from the active 
operation of mines and accepted the appoint- 
ment of vice-president of the Duluth & Iron 
Railway. Subsequently he resigned this post, 
and in the month of April, 1899, he entered 
upon the duties of his present office as general 
superintendent of the American Mining Com- 



354 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



pany, the business of which company he con- 
ducts at its headquarters in the American 
Exchange Building at Duluth. Mr. Selwood 
is recognized as a business man whose energy, 
good judgment and general efficiency have giv- 
en a powerful impetus to the development of 
the iron mining industry in this State. Nor 
is he appreciated only in his relation to min- 
ing interests. His genial and kindly disposi- 
tion at I aches to him many friends, and as a 
citizen he is held in esteem for the practical 
interest he takes in whatever effects the wel- 
fare of his city and State. In politics, as in 
other interests, his characteristic energy and 
enthusiasm make themselves felt, and he is 
very loyal to the principles of the Republican 
party, being particularly fervent in his ad- 
vocacy of a sound currency. July 31, 1867, at 
Ontonagon, Michigan, Mr. Selwood was mar- 
ried to Miss Ophelia Mathews. To them have 
been born seven children, live of whom are 
living. Financially, Mr. Selwood possesses a 
comfortable competency while still in his 
prime, and although the hardships incident to 
the miner's life have left something of their 
marks upon him, he is in the main well pre- 
served, and may reasonably count upon many 
years of active labor and enjoyment of the 
fruits thereof. 



EDWARD P. TOWNE. 

Edward Penfleld Towne, of the law firm of 
Towne & Merchant, of Duluth, was born 
June 16, 18G7, at Canandaigua, New York. 
He is the son of Edward P. and Eliza H. (Eddy) 
Towne, his mother being a daughter of Ansell 
D. Eddy, of Newark, New Jersey. Edward P. 
Towne, senior, for whom the subject of this 
sketch was named, was a native of New Hamp- 
shire, who, in 1834, came west with his father, 
locating at Batavia, Illinois, where his boy- 
hood days were passed. He was privileged 
with opportunities for a thorough education, 
and, deciding upon the legal profession as a 
life pursuit, he became a student of law, and 
in due time a practitioner at Chicago. He was 
a member of the whilom prominent firm of 



Waite, Towne & Clarke, whose headquarters 
were in Chicago, but whose reputation and 
services were extended throughout the State. 
Mr. Towne died in 18G<>, and of the four chil- 
dren born to him all are now deceased except 
his namesake, Edward P., of this sketch. Ed- 
ward I'. Towne, junior, inherited not only his 
father's name, but many of the characteristics 
through which the elder man had achieved 
success, and he accepted, as if by inheritance, 
the profession of paternal choice. Like his 
father, too, he was blessed with excellent edu- 
cational advantages, which he appreciated and 
turned to good account. As a youth, however, 
he could not have been classified as belonging 
to the "book-worm" type. He went in for ath- 
letics and out-of-door sports, and has, at one 
time or another, been an enthusiastic member 
of various athletic clubs. His education was 
obtained in the Empire State, the elementary 
portion of it in his native town and at Troy, 
after which he prepared for college at the 
Mohegan Lake Academy, at Peekskill. Upon 
the completion of his academic course, in 1884, 
he entered Union College, at Schenectady, from 
which latter institution he graduated in 1888, 
receiving the degree of A. B. Three years later 
his Alma Mater conferred upon him, also, the 
degree of A. M. His profession he acquired 
at the Albany Law School, graduating there 
in 1890 with the degree of LL. B. In the same 
year he was admitted to the bar at Albany, 
then came west, locating in the city of his 
father's old home. For two years he was as- 
sociated, as managing clerk, with John P. ^Yil- 
son, Esq., an attorney of National reputation. 
In 1892 Mr. Towne left Chicago to come to 
Duluth, where he entered into partnership 
with C. S. Davis, forming the firm of Towne 
& Davis. Five years later this firm was dis- 
solved, and subsequently Mr. Towne united 
his business interests with those of II. \Y. Mer- 
chant, the style of which present partnership 
is Towne & Merchant. The location of their 
commodious offices is in the Trust Company 
Building, where they are conducting a lucra- 
tive and growing practice. Mr. Towne is vice- 
president, a director and general counsel of 
the Duluth Trust Company. He belongs to the 




Tho (Sntury Pulitishnig i Cnyrwrny Co Chicaytr 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



355 



ancient order of Masons, being a member of 
the Blue Lodge, Chapter, Commandery, and 

Scottish Kite. He is also a member of the Del- 
ta Phi Greek letter fraternity and the Society 
of Colonial Wars of Minnesota, and the several 
clubs of Duluth. Mr. Towne was married, in 
October, L895, to Miss Adaline H. Hunter, 
daughter of the late John C. Hunter, of Du- 
luth. Mrs. Towne died in July, 1896, leav- 
ing an infant son, who was christened Hunter 
A. Mr. Towne is a Republican, but, al- 
though he feels an active interest in political 
matters, he has been too much absorbed by his 
profession to cultivate any aspirations towards 
public office. A specialty of bis business is 
corporation law; but whether in special or 
general practice, he gives the same careful at- 
tention to all details of the matters intrusted 
to him; and the financial success and the repu- 
tation for fineness of legal judgment which he 
enjoys, while still on the morning side of life's 
meridian, have come to him as the natural re- 
sults of thorough and conscientious work. 



WILLIAM L. WINDOM. 

William Lincoln Windom, a prominent at- 
torney of Duluth, was born at Sterling, 
Illinois. June 1, 1800. On the paternal side 
he is extracted from Quaker stock, which 
is traceable to a remote English ancestry, 
while his mother, whose maiden name was 
Ruth II. Lnmm, was descended from a dis- 
tinguished Virginia family. His father, 
Jonas Windom, was a native of Ohio, and re- 
moved, in 1845, to Sterling, Illinois, where he 
died in the year 1887. In his lifetime he was 
an energetic and prosperous business man, and 
was an enthusiastic Abolitionist during the 
times of our Civil strife, although never identi- 
fying himself with politics. His son, William 
Lincoln, of whose life this sketch will now 
treat, was reared in his native town of Ster- 
ling, from whose public schools he graduated 
at the age of eighteen. He then studied law 
under Col. William M. Kilgore and Frederick 
K. Sackett, and at the age of twenty-one was 
admitted to practice at the bar of Illinois. But 



he was compelled, by a derangement of the 
eyesight, to postpone the pursuit of his pro- 
fession, and, going west, he led an active out- 
of-door life until 1887, in which year he located, 
in a professional capacity, at Ashland, Wiscon- 
sin, where he enjoyed prompt and abundant 
success. The last case tried by him in that 
State was the noted one of Pool vs. Thirty-one 
Separate Insurance Companies, which was 
pending for two years. Mr. Windom handled 
the case in a masterly manner, securing one 
of the largest verdicts ever obtained in an 
insurance cause in Wisconsin. In 1896 Mr. Win- 
dom came to Duluth, where he formed a part- 
nership, which still continues, with M. H. 
McMahon; and during the last four years his 
firm has built up a very lucrative practice, and 
become conspicuous in its connection with 
many distinguished cases. On the criminal 
side may be mentioned the case of the State vs. 
Ferguson, into which the services of Mr. Win- 
dom were called after the death sentence had 
been pronounced upon the defendant, and the 
day of execution set by the Governor. Desper- 
ate as the situation appeared, Mr. Windom did 
not despair, and his efforts resulted in the 
reprieve of the condemned man. On the civil 
calendar, our subject has been successful in 
numerous cases involving large sums of money, 
and on the occasion of the application before 
the State board for the division of St. Louis 
county he stood as the sole attorney for the 
opposition, winning the case against heavy 
odds. October :J, 1893, at St. Paul, Mr. 
Windom was married to Lotta Cornelia Gard- 
ner, daughter of John E. Gardner. The Hon. 
William Windom, deceased, late Secretary of 
the United States Treasury, was an uncle of 
William L., and the nephew lias given ample 
evidence of abilities which qualify him, also, 
for high official duties. Heretofore, however, he 
has not permitted his name to be proposed as 
candidate for any office whatsoever, though 
from present indications it seems probable 
that, in the approaching campaign, he may be 
made Republican nominee for Congress from 
the Sixth District. Whether or not he will ac- 
cept the compliment, he alone is in a position 
to determine. Mr. Windom is much in favor 



.V 



5" 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



with the Republican State Central Committee, 
in whose service he has done most effective 
work since 1892. Previously— in 1894-5— as 
chairman of the Ashland County Central Com 
mil tee of Wisconsin, he endeared himself to 
ins constituency by his sagacious and irre- 
proachable condud of the campaign to a com- 
plete victory, the general approbation finding 
ardent expression through the press. As a 
st mn p speaker Mr. Windoin has few equals in 
the State, and his eloquence has been fell on 
occasions other than political. In a speech de- 
livered at Duluth on Decoration Day. L898, he 
paid a ivivent tribute to the sleeping patriots 
of our Civil War. according honor and rever- 
ence alike t,i all. regardless of whether their 
resting places are marked with imposing mon- 
uments or wooden slabs, or are the unmarked. 
nunn.no trenches. Ho dwelt with touching 
eloquence upon tin- part played by the women 
of our Nation in Hie great sacrifice, pronounc- 
ing them patriots no less than the brave sol- 
dims themselves, lie strengthened in his hear- 
ers the realization of their blessings as citizens 
of the United States— blessings purchased at 
the awful price of seven hundred and fifty 
thousand lives— and impressed upon them the 
magnitude of their debt to that martyred mul- 
titude and to our veterans. Continuing, he said 
in part: 

"When President Lincoln called upon them 
they responded, from all political parties, from 
all walks in life— one -rand blue line! They 
knew only one thin-: the Covernmeiit was in 
danger; 'Old Glory' had been tired upon. 
Eome was nothing, associations were nothing, 
life was nothing. The Union was in danger, 
which had been established by their fathers; 
and asking Cod's blessing upon their cause, 
their parents, their wives, their children, they 
left all. and. amidst the smoke of battle, the 
shrieks of bursting shell and the diseases of 
the camps, hundreds of thousands of men laid 
down their lives, until finally Providence 
smiled upon our arms, the last shot was tired, 
Appomattox was reached and the Union was 
saved. The Union was saved because the tin's 
of patriotism had been kept lighted; it was 
saved because the spirit of liberty which ani- 
mated the Revolutionary sire still burned with- 
in the bosom of the son. And the same spirit 



is manifest to-day. when our boys in blue again 
go forth for freedom and humanity, not in the 
spirit of conquest, but in the same old cause, 
liberty, not for themselves — they have that 
now — but for others who have mner enjoyed 
liberty, and want it. Their time for our honor 
and praise will soon come; perhaps some of 
I heir -raves will be included in the decorations 
on next Memorial Day. Put 'sufficient unto 
the day is the evil thereof." The old Veterans 
now deserve our undivided attention. All 
honor in the past, now and forever, to the dead 
soldier martyrs, and the living soldier heroes 
of the Union arniv!" 



HENRY D. HAWKINS. 

Henry Hastings Hawkins is a leading citizen 
and lawyer of the village of Carlton, and coun- 
ty attorney of Carlton county. Minnesota. He 
is the son of the late Hon. L. R. Hawkins, who 
for many years was a resident of this State, 
and a complete biographical sketch of whom 
is contained in Major T. M. Newson's book, en- 
titled "Old Settlers of .Minnesota." Judge Haw- 
kins, whose remote ancestry was English, was 
a native of Connecticut, but spent many years 
of his early life in Pennsylvania, in the mean- 
time being married to Mary Vose, of Massa- 
chusetts, and it was at Smithport, Pennsyl- 
vania, that Henry II.. the subject of this 
sketch, was born, on the 30th of January, 
1840. In IS.").") the boy came, with his parents, 
to Minnesota, settling upon a farm in Scott 
county. Here he remained to the age of sev- 
enteen, attending the public schools of his 
home locality. He was fifteen when the Civil 
War broke out, and two years later hi' enlisted 
as a private in Company L, Second Minnesota 
Cavalry, and served with his regiment until 
honorably discharged in 1866. In 1ST7 he lo- 
cated in the village of Thomson, in the town- 
ship of the same name, Carlton county, Minne- 
sota. He was at this time engaged in railroad 
construction. Inning first given his attention 
to that line of business upon his return from 
the war. In 1878 he was elected auditor of 
Carlton county, and gave up railroad construe- 




The Century PiMisMng StEnyravinp Co Chicago- 



C&^a^t^ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



1?7 



tion to attend to the duties of this office. Dur- 
ing his residence in Carlton, Mr. Hawkins has 
been an almost continuous servant of the pub- 
lic in one capacity or another. Shortly after 
taking up his residence in the village of 
Thomson, the community selected him as its 
chief official, and lie continued to administer 
its affairs for ten years. For an equal space 
of time lie served as district school clerk; for 
six years presided as chairman of the board of 
supervisors; was for five years a justice of the 
peace, and for eight years served in the office 
of town clerk. In fact, he has tilled nearly 
every office of importance in Carlton county. 
Four times he was nominated as a candidate 
for the State Legislature, twice for the Senate 
and twice for the Lower House, but he being 
a Democrat in a district largely Republican, 
was defeated by small majorities. Mr. Haw 
kins' career as a lawyer dates from 1880, in 
which year he was admitted to the bar. He 
has, since 1878, been county attorney of his 
county eleven years; county auditor six years; 
county superintendent of schools two years; 
county treasurer two years; deputy clerk of 
the District Court six years; and register of 
deeds six years, having at one time held five 
of said county offices by election, and in a 
county strongly Republican. Mr. Hawkins was 
unanimously nominated by his party'August 
7, 1892, as their candidate for Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor, and made a gallant run. In IS!):! he was 
an applicant under President Cleveland for the 
appointment of Governor of Alaska, and was 
indorsed by all political parties of his State. 
In all these positions that he has held his serv- 
ice has been disinterested and pure. Through- 
out his history as a voter, Mr. Hawkins has 
been a loyal Democrat, entering with such 
interest and energy into the campaigns of his 
party that he has won for himself the name 
of "stalwart"; and he has long been promi- 
nently known in all parts of the State as an 
able and eloquent campaign speaker. He is a 
man, too, with many personal friends, who 
honor him much for the abilities of which he 
has given abundant proof, and more for his 
high integrity of character. His services are 
always freely given to the laborer, and he is 



known throughout northern Minnesota as the 
"poor man's friend." Mr. Hawkins' legal prac- 
tice has grown to proportions sufficient to ab- 
sorb his undivided attention; but whether he 
will be allowed to devote himself exclusively 
to professional work remains to be proven. 
Possessing so many active political friends, it 
seems more than probable that his services 
will in the future, as in the past, be solicited 
for positions of trust and honor. He is at 
present an aide-de-camp, with rank of colonel, 
on the staff of Governor John Lind. Mr. Haw- 
kins belongs to the Uniform Rank of Knights 
of Pythias, and is a member of the mutual 
insurance organization known as Woodman of 
the World. He is a family man, having been 
married, September 22, 1878, at Duluth, Minne- 
sota, to Miss Emma E. Ruby. A son, Valentine 
H. Hawkins, is their only child. 



MELVIN J. FORBES. 



Melvin Jackson Forbes, president of the Con- 
solidated Elevator Company, of Duluth, Minne- 
sota, was born at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, 
December 31, 1848. He is the son of Andrew 
J. and Betsey (Fuller) Forbes, and is descended 
through many generations from one of two 
brothers, who, in the year 1635, emigrated from 
England and became the founders of the 
Forbes family on this side the Atlantic. The 
father of Melvin J., who was by trade a shoe- 
maker, was also a native of Massachusetts, and 
died in that State in 1862. The subject of this 
sketch was the eldest of three children, and 
as the financial circumstances of his parents 
were very modest, he early began to feel the 
responsibility of making his own way in the 
world. He had acquired the rudiments of an 
English education in the district school in 
proximity to which he lived, but was ambitious 
for higher study; and it was his good fortune 
to have been born in the vicinity of an ex- 
cellent educational institution — the old Bridge- 
water academy. This he managed to attend, 
from thirteen to seventeen years of age, by 
spending the summer vacations, not in recrea- 



358 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



lion, bul in hard work. In his business career 
In' began ;it the fool of the ladder, as errand 
boy for a publishing house in Boston. From 
ihis humble situation he climbed, sleji by step, 
until, four years after he entered the employ 
of the house, he had become intrusted with the 
full management of both the wholesale and 
retail departments of the business. By this 
time he was of age, and during the year 1S70 
he came west and located in Duluth, Minne- 
sota. His first venture in this city was an 
independent one in the book and stationery 
business, which he pursued for about four 
years. At the end of this time he made a rad- 
ical change in his business arrangements, but 
one which led, more or less directly, to his pres- 
ent responsible and enviable position. He en- 
gaged as bookkeeper with the Union Improve- 
ment & Elevator Company, and continued in 
the service of that firm for four years, or there- 
abouts, then resigning his position to become 
a member of the grain commission house of 
George Spencer & Company. In 1889, however, 
this latter firm went out of business; but in 
1893 Mr. Forbes was appointed receiver of two 
elevator companies, viz.: the Northern Pacific 
and the Red Valley, in the settlement of whose 
affairs he was for some months engaged. About 
this time the old Union Improvement & Ele- 
vator Company, whose service Mr. Forbes had 
entered as bookkeeper nearly twenty years be- 
fore, effected a consolidation with the Lake 
Superior Elevator Company, and of the result 
of this fusion, which wa"s styled the Consoli- 
dated Elevator Company, Mr. Forbes was 
elected president. This was in 1NII4, and he is 
still presiding officer of the company, the busi- 
ness of which is in a very healthy and flour- 
ishing condition. Eight capacious elevators, in 
active operation, for the terminal equipment 
of the Consolidated Company, at Duluth, while 
il ow ns some seventy other elevators and ware- 
houses distributed along the line of the North- 
ern Pacific Railroad. During the year of 1899 
alone it handled over forty million bushels of 
grain. In political faith Mr. Forbes is an un- 
swerving Republican, but he has never been 
ambitious to hold public office. In connection 
with institutions other than political, however, 



he has done good work. In 1885 he was elected 
president of the Dululh Board of Trade, which 
post he filled for two years, and he is at the 
present time vice-president of the American 
Exchange Bank, of Duluth, having been 
elected to that office in 1899. On January 6, 
1885, Mr. Forbes was united in marriage to 
Miss Ida M. Raymond, a daughter of S. EL Ray- 
mond, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, the wedding 
ceremony being performed at Duluth. Mr. and 
Mrs. Forbes have no children. 



JOHN H. KOOP. 



John Henry Koop, mayor of Brainerd, Min- 
nesota, is of German birth, Hanover being the 
city of his nativity, and the date February 8, 
1857. His father was William Koop, a promi- 
nent educator of Germany, and the first few 
years of the sun's residence in this country, to 
which he came at the age of eleven, were spent 
in stud\ in American institutions of learning, 
lie was first, for a short time, a pupil at St. 
Vincent College, in Westmoreland county, 
Pennsylvania. Then, in 1X<>9, he came to Min- 
nesota and entered St. John's University, in 
Stearns county, which he continued to attend 
for about five years. In 1ST! he went to work 
as clerk in a drug store at St. Paul; but he 
abandoned this line of business in a compara- 
tively short time and taught school for two 
years in Dakota county, of this State. In 1S77 
he accepted a position as manager of the D. II. 
Valentine Elevator Company, in St. Joseph, 
.Minnesota, and was for the next two years en- 
gaged in buying grain for the .Minneapolis 
Millers' Association, under the supervision of 
General Andrews. He first came to Brainerd 
in 1879, where, with the exception of three 
years, he has since resided. Here he devoted 
his time to the general mercantile business un- 
til his services were enlisted in public affairs. 
During the year 1884-5 he served on the board 
of city aldermen, and in 1886, under the Cleve- 
land administration, he received the appoint- 
ment of postmaster of Brainerd, the duties of 
which office occupied him for four years. Upon 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



359 



the expiration of his term as postmaster he 
moved to Staples, Minnesota, and re-engaged 
in mercantile pursuits, which he continued to 
follow after his return, in 18!)3, to Brainerd. 
In 18% he was nominated for the State Legis- 
lature, his election being defeated by a small 
majority; and in 189S he became Democratic- 
candidate for mayor of Brainerd, and was 
elected by a majoritywhich all the wards of the 
city concurred in swelling to overwhelming 
proportions, notwithstanding the fact that 
Brainerd was then strongly Republican. Mr. 
Koop has taken an active part in many polit- 
ical contests, his power as a speaker making 
his campaign work especially valued by his 
party. Of late, however, his Democracy lias be- 
come somewhat modified. He endorses the 
policy of President McKinley, as pursued in 
both the Spanish- American war and the pres- 
ent struggle in the Philippines. Mr. Koop is a 
man of unsual executive ability, which enables 
him to successfully conduct a variety of enter- 
prises at the same time. He is vice-president of 
the Northwestern Hardwood Lumber Coin 
pany, at Nary, Minnesota, which concern was 
the recent purchaser from the Pillsbury and 
Walker companies of all their oak timber for 
the purpose of manufacturing into railroad 
lumber; and he operates a hardwood mill of 
his own on his farm, which is located on the 
Brainerd & Northern Minnesota Railway, near 
Island Lake. In the city of Brainerd, also, he 
has under his personal management and con- 
trol extensive interests in the dry-goods indus- 
try. But with a volume of private business 
which might distract the mind of a man of less 
balance, he administers the affairs of his office 
as mayor with unvarying dignity and repose. 
October 3, 1870, Mr. Koop was married to Miss 
Lena Linneman, a daughter of Hon. John H. 
Linneman, of St. Joseph, Minnesota. Three 
children have been born to them, viz.: Rosa, 
Lilian and Grover. Mr. Koop belongs to the 
order of Knights of Pythias and to the Modern 
Woodmen of America. In religious faith he is 
Catholic. Between Gov. John Lind, of Minne- 
sota, and Mayor Koop exist terms of mutual 
courtesy and friendship; and in his early prime 
the latter has attained to a position, not only 



of financial security, but of political prestige, 
which paints his future bright with promise. 



sumner t. Mcknight. 

The family of Sumner T. MeKuight, of 
Minneapolis, is descended from Scottish an- 
cestry through a line of American progeni- 
tors beginning in early colonial times. 
The name was originally McNaughton, and 
New Jersey the point at which it took root in 
America. Just how and when the transforma- 
tion from McNaughton to MeKuight occurred, 
however, belongs to the interesting mystery 
which envelopes the evolution of many of our 
modern names. Sumner Thomas McKnight 
was born in the year 1836, at Truxton, Cort- 
land county, New York. His early education 
was obtained in the public schools of his na- 
tive town. His father was a merchant of Trux- 
ton, and the boy promptly developed an apti- 
tude and preference for an active business life. 
He was but sixteen when he came to Wiscon- 
sin and procured a clerical position in a gen- 
eral store at Ripon. Here he remained for two 
years, then secured a position of larger oppor- 
tunities at Wausau, in the same State, in the 
store of George N. Lyman, the business of the 
establishment being conducted in conjunction 
with the lumber trade, in which Mr. Lyman 
was also engaged. Before he had been two 
years in this position his commercial capabili- 
ties had become so evident that he was made 
general manager of both the store and the 
lumber manufactory. He continued in charge 
of this dual enterprise for about three 
years, at the end of which time Mr. Lyman 
disposed of his lumber mills and store. During 
his managership Mr. McKnight acquired an ex- 
perience and technical understanding of busi- 
ness matters which was later to prove invalu- 
able to him in his own commercial operations. 
In 1850 he came to Minnesota and established 
himself at Blue Earth city in a general store, 
which he conducted until 1862. He then re- 
moved to Hannibal, Missouri, and formed a 
partnership with J. B. Price in the wholesale 
and retail lumber business. He was associated 



3<5o 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



willi Mi. Trice for six years, and to this part- 
nership Mr. McKnight was indebted for his 
connection, formed in lsyit, with the firm of 
Porter, Moon & Company, lumber manufactur- 
ers at Eau Claire. Wisconsin. The material 
turned out by the mills ar Eau Claire was 
transferred to Hannibal for distribution, which 
function was operated under the style of S. T. 
McKnight & Company. The enterprise flour- 
ished, and in ls7-"> the business was incorpo- 
rated under the nan f the Northwestern 

Lumber Company, Mr. McKnight being made 
secretary and treasurer. This position he still 
holds, and the history of his business career 
is inseparably identified with the development 
and achievements of this company. In 1883 
Mr. McKnight assisted in organizing two lum- 
ber companies, viz.: the Barronette and Shell 
Lake, for the erecting and operating of mills 
at those two points in Wisconsin; and in 1886 
the Northwestern Lumber Company bought 
the saw-mill at Sterling. Wisconsin, with an 
adjacent block of timber, which they worked 
until the supply was exhausted — a period of 
about six years. They then purchased the ex- 
tensive plant of the Eau Claire Company, 
which comprised not only a broad area of tim- 
ber land and two mills, but valuable property 
in the city of Eau Claire. In the meantime, in 
1800, the company had also acquired a con- 
trolling interest in the Montreal River Lum- 
ber Company, located at Gile, Wisconsin; and 
in 1892, the year of their investment in the 
Eau Claire property, Hie Northwestern Coin 
pany built a mill at Stanley, Chippewa county, 
whose cutting capacity was 150,000 feet per 
day, of ten hours. Since 1895 Mr. McKnight 
has been associated, as one of its vice-presi- 
dents and directors, with the Mississippi Val- 
ley Lumbermen's Association, and in 1896, 
when lumbermen from all parts of the country 
convened at Cincinnati and organized them- 
selves to the end of protecting their industry 
in the matter of tariff legislation, he was one 
of the twenty-two appointed to go to Washing- 
ton and present the interests of their organi- 
zation to the Congressional commit lee. Tn 
1899 he was elected president of the North- 
western Lumber Company of Eau Claire. Wis 



cousin, and the Montreal River Lumber Com- 
pany of Gile, Wisconsin. .Mr. McKnight has 
served as director in several banking houses, 
and in I he province of financial business no less 
than in his lumber operations, he has been 
highly esteemed as an able and honorable busi- 
iii ss man. In politics he is a loyal Republican, 
but his busy career has included no effort to- 
wards political prominence. In 1868 Mr. Mc- 
Knight was united in marriage to Eugenie 
Manville, of Ripon, Wisconsin. Four children 
were born io them, of whom the three living 
are: Harriet E., Caroline E., now Mrs. George 
I'. Christian, of Minneapolis, and Sumner T., 
Junior. 



CONRAD GOTZIAN. 



The late Conrad Gotzian, of St. Paul, was 
born August 15, 1835, at Berke an die Werra, 

a village about fifty miles from Leipsic, in 
Saxe-Wiemar, Prussia. His early education 
was rather elementary, owing to the restricted 
means of the family, not at all to the fault of 
the boy, who was naturally ambitious, indus- 
trious and persevering. In 1852 he came to 
seek his fortune in America. He was only six- 
teen, but he was blessed with a splendid phy- 
sique, and a sanguine and genial temperament, 
which enlisted the kindly interest of all with 
whom he came in contact. His ship landed at 
Philadelphia, where, after seeking a while for 
work, he became apprenticed to a boot and 
shoe manufacturer. In three years' time he 
had become thoroughly skilled in the trade, 
and in the spring of 1855 he came to Minne- 
sota, secured employment at St. Paul ill the 
line of his experience, and, after two years of 
close application to work and frugal living, 
was able, with the help of friends who had 
become interested in him, to establish himself 
as a retail dealer in boots and shoes. His loca- 
tion was on Jackson street, between Fifth and 
Sixth streets. His venture prospered from the 
first, and his business gradually expanded. 
After a few years he became engaged, to a lim- 
ited extent, in jobbing sales, and by 1865 the 
retail side of his business had been entirely 
abandoned in favor of jobbing and manufac- 




^J 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



361 



turing, which he conducted on a scale requir- 
ing the employment of thirty-five operatives. 
During a few years his brother, Adam Gotzian, 
also a well and honorably known citizen of St. 
Paul, was associated with him in business. In 
the seventies he took into partnership George 
W. Freeman, one of his employes, under the 
style of C. Gotzian & Company. The firm lo- 
cated on Third street, and its establishment, 
large at the start, was later on increased to its 
present extensive proportions. The annual 
sales of the firm, beginning with $65,000, in- 
creased until they were reckoned by millions, 
while nearly five hundred persons were cm- 
ployed in manufacturing the goods. Mr. Got- 
zian was a thorough business man in the best 
sense of the word. To his nature the innumer- 
able tricks of trade by which the "sharp" man 
gains advantage over his duller competitors 
were wholly foreign and intolerable; and each 
one of his employes perfectly understood that 
all meanness and deceit, in whatever guise, 
were under the severest ban. His success was 
won on the basis of absolute integrity, and his 
business patrons became his faithful friends. 
His custom was widely sought, and no citizen 
of St. Paul enjoyed a higher commercial rating 
than he, both at home and in the East. Out- 
side of business hours, Mr. Gotzian devoted 
much of his time to reading and educational 
research. He had always felt the lack of early 
school privileges, and resolved to supply the 
deficiency by systematic self culture, lie was 
a lover of books, and a substantial library 
grew up in his home, while his fund of general 
knowledge expanded proportionately. Men 
sought his advice on matters of moment, and 
his cooperation in schemes for the improve- 
ment and advancement of the city. His posi- 
tion in the community became even more 
prominent and influential. He was for many 
years a director of the German-American Na- 
tional Bank of St. Paul, and rendered most 
valuable service in establishing its policy. As 
an active member of the Chamber of Com- 
merce, Board of Trade and the Jobbers' Union, 
he labored effectively. He was a Mason of the 
Ancient Landmark Lodge, and a member of 
the Minnesota Club. In society he was con- 



genial and entertaining. A child's clearness 
of conscience made possible his child-like ef- 
fervescence of spirits and humor and hearty 
good-fellowship. Occasionally he afforded 
himself an interval of complete recreation, 
making hunting or fishing excursions to the 
prairies and lakes, his usual good fortune at- 
tending him, even in his sports. Mr. Gotzian 
had no aspirations for political preferment, 
and the only office lie ever held — that of mem- 
ber of the State Legislature — he consented to 
accept for the gratification of certain friends, 
and to aid them in carrying into effect meas- 
ures looking toward the betterment of munici- 
pal conditions. On January 13, 1S59, Mr. Got- 
zian was married to Miss Caroline Busse, of 
Cincinnati, Ohio. A family of nine children 
came to augment the felicity of their union, six 
of whom, now living, are: Mrs. T. L. Schur- 
meier, Mrs. A. B. Driscoll.Paul H. Gotzian, Mrs. 
Ambrose Tighe, Vallie G. Gotzian and Jessie 
R. V. Gotzian. In 1877 Mr. Gotzian built his 
beautiful residence, under whose roof the fam- 
ily led a united and happy life. Mr. Got- 
zian Mas strongly domestic in his tastes, and 
was a most devoted husband and father, while 
Mrs. Gotzian possessed the womanly and so- 
cial qualities which combine to make a perfect 
keeper of the home and dispenser of its hospi- 
talities. Added to his other blessings, was 
the superb physical health of Mr. Gotzian. He 
had scarcely, in his whole life, known sickness 
until late in the year 1886, when he was at- 
tacked by the affection of the head and brain 
which, in a few short months, resulted fatally. 
A change of climate was recommended, and 
he spent the early winter months in southern 
California. To no avail, however, and as he 
felt his end approaching he turned his face 
homeward, and died in the bosom of his be- 
reaved family on the 21st of February, issT. 
The estate of .Mr. Gotzian was valued at $1,000,- 
nut); yet lie had been a man to spend freely 
for The comforts of life, and a generous con- 
tributor to many charities and progressive en- 
terprises. Mr. Gotzian was a member of the 
Methodist-Episcopal church of St. Paul, with 
which he had become united in the early days 
of his residence in the city. He was an earnest 



362 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



;ind consistenl Christian gentleman, practicing 
the golden rule so effectively thai a1 his death 
he had a host of mourning friends, aii<l not one 
enemy. 



GEORGE M. PALMER. 

George M. Palmer, of Mankato, was born 
in Winnebago county, Wisconsin, Novem- 
ber 17, 1S53. His parents were John and 
Cordelia (Morrison) Palmer, both natives of 
Fayette, Maine. They moved to Wisconsin, 
in 1848, and located the farm where they 
spent the remainder of their lives. The 
father died in 1S(17 and the mother in 1880. 
On the paternal side, his ancestors were 
early settlers of New Hampshire, of Eng- 
lish extraction, locating in Maine about 1800. 
His mother was of Scotch descent, and the 
Morrisons were also early settlers of New Eng- 
land. They reared a family of ten children, 
three of whom are now deceased. George M.. 
the subject of this sketch, went to live with 
an uncle, when eight years of age, who. with 
his family, removed to the State of Maine. He- 
attended the common school, and later the 
Monmouth Academy, at Monmouth. Maine, 
where his uncle resided. In 1808 he returned 
lo .Minnesota and settled in Garden City, Blue 
Earth county, where he attended the village 
school for a time, and then found employment 
as a clerk in the general store of T. M. Boyn 
ton & Company. Here he remained until the 
business was closed out, in 1872, when he went 
to St. Paul and attended a business college, 
taking the full course. Returning to Garden 
City, he immediately engaged as book-keeper 
with the Mankato Linseed Oil Company, of 
which Mr. R. D. Hubbard was the manager 
and treasurer. He remained with them from 
the summer of 187:: until (he fall of 1870, when 
lie resigned, and joined Mr. Hubbard in the 
building of the Mankato Flouring Mills; since 
its incorporation Mr. Palmer has been manager 
of the mill, having entire charge of the office 
business. In 1888 he formed a partnership 
with Mr. S. H. Grannis. in the elevator busi- 
ness, the firm being Grannis & Palmer, and 
built elevators along the line of the Chicago, 
St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway. In 



1892 Mr. R. D. Hubbard bought Mr. Grannis' 
interest, and the firm was changed to Hubbard 
& Palmer. In 1807 the business was incorpo- 
rated as Hubbard & Palmer Company. Mr. 
Palmer has been the manager since the busi- 
ness was first organized, and has been presi- 
dent of the company since its incorporation. 
They have about forty elevators at different 
points along the line of the Chicago, St. Paul, 
Minneapolis & Omaha Railway, in Minnesota, 
Smith Dakota and Iowa, through which they 
handle about three million bushels of grain 
annually, most of the wheal being for the sup 
ply of (he Mankato Mills. They also handle a 
large amount of coal, in which (hey carry on 
bolh a retail and wholesale business. Mr. Pal- 
mer has been so much occupied with the de- 
tails of his extensive business that he has had 
but little time to give to public affairs. In poli- 
tics he is a Republican, and, much against his 
wishes, he was elected mayor of Mankato in 
L885. He has also served on the school board, 
and is a member of the board of trade, and a 
Blue Lodge Mason. Mr. Palmer was married, 
in 1881, to Olivia M. Roberts, a native of Man- 
kato, daughter of William R. Roberts, of Welsh 
and English descent. They have two children 
— Earl M. and Ruth. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer are 
members of the Baptist church. As a citizen 
Mr. Palmer enjoys an enviable reputation. In- 
telligent, clear headed and possessed of excel- 
lent judgment, strong and vigorous and of good 
habits, his capacity for work is very great. 
The steadiness and persistency with which he 
has followed his favorite pursuits testify to 
his great physical endurance. In public affairs 
he is liberal and progressive, giving to those 
duties the same painstaking attention that is 
given to Lis private affairs. As a business man 
he ranks aiming the most successful in the 
State. 



HORATIO 1>. BROWN. 

Horatio D. Brown, a prominent banker 
of Albert Lea, and one of the early settlers of 
Freeborn county, was born in the town of 
Faluns. Onondaga county. New York, April 15, 
IS.",."). He is the son of Aimer Brown, a native 




T^z^T-e 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



36.3 



of Hartford, Connecticut, whoso father emi- 
grated to New York and settled in Onondaga 
county in the latter part of the Seventeenth 
Century, when the country was a great wil- 
derness. He served in the War of 1812 against 
the "mother country," and some of his ances- 
tors were soldiers in the War of the Revolu- 
tion. The mother of our subject, Lovina 
Cadwell, was also of old New England 
stock. Abner Brown was a farmer, and he 
reared a large family of children, only three 
of whom are living. The subject of this 
biography was raised on the home farm, at- 
tended the common school and later prepared 
for college at the De Ruyter and Cazenovia 
seminaries, and, iii 1852, entered Union Col- 
lege at Schenectady, New York, from which he 
graduated, in 1855. He came west the same 
year, and spent about one year teaching in Illi- 
nois and Iowa. In 1850 he removed to Minne- 
sota, and located a claim in the town of Hay- 
ward, Freeborn county, about six miles 
southeast of Albert Lea, w 7 hen there were only 
about half a dozen families living in the coun- 
ty. He had brought with him a compass, and 
was soon engaged in surveying. In 1857 he 
was elected the first county surveyor of Free- 
born county, and removed to Albert Lea. He 
was soon after appointed deputy clerk of the 
District" Court, and in 1861 was elected to that 
office, and held it for ten years. Mr. Brown 
enlisted, March 9, 1862, in Company C, Fifth 
Minnesota Volunteer Infantry; was mustered 
in as second lieutenant, August 31, 1862. His 
company was ordered South in December fol- 
lowing, and joined the regiment at La Grange, 
Tennessee. He was engaged, with his regi- 
ment, under the command of General Grant, 
in the action at Jackson, Mississippi, May 14, 
1S63; at Vicksburg, May 22; at Mechanics- 
burg, Mississippi, June 3; at Richmond, Loui- 
siana, June 15; and participated in the siege 
of Vicksburg from May 19 until July 4, 1863, 
when the rebel forces capitulated. His regi- 
ment was included in the contingent sent from 
General Grant's command to the assistance of 
General Banks in his Red river expedition, 
and was in the engagement at De Russy, Loui- 
siana, March 4, 1804; at Henderson, April 9; 



at Coulerville, Louisiana, April 23; Bayou 
Roberts, Louisiana, May 8; Mensura, Loui- 
siana, May 15; Yellow Bayou, Louisiana, May 
18, 18C4. In August, 1864, Mr. Brown was 
transferred to Hie Eleventh Minnesota Volun- 
teer Infantry as adjutant, and was with the 
regiment during its service in and around 
Nashville, Tennessee. He was mustered out of 
the service at St. Paul in July, 1865, and re- 
turning to Albert Lea, he resumed the duiies 
of the office of clerk of the District Court. In 
1871 he resigned that office and organized the 
private bank of H. D. Brown, and later, with 
D. R. P. Hibbs, the banking house of H. D. 
Brown & Company. This firm continued in 
business until March, 1892, when the Albert 
Lea National Bank was incorporated, and Mr. 
Brown elected president, which position lie 
still occupies. In 1871 he was elected to the 
State Senate and served one term. He has 
also served his city as mayor, and has been 
active and prominent in all matters pertaining 
to the welfare and building up of his city and 
county. He was president of the Minnesota 
Bankers' Association in 1899. In politics, Mr. 
Brown is a Republican. He was married, De- 
cember 19, 1861, to Miss Mary L. Peck, daugh- 
ter of Mr. Harris Peck, of Albert Lea. They 
have a family of three sons, all married and 
men of prominence, and all residing in Albert 
Lea. The eldest, Dr. L. A. Brown, a dentist; 
Harris N. Brown, of Knatvold & Brown, bank- 
ers, and Fred C. Brown, in the Albert Lea 
National Bank. Mr. and Mrs. Brown are mem- 
bers of the First Presbyterian church, of which 
lie is a trustee. He is also one of the trustees 
and treasurer of Albert Lea College for young 
women. 



BENJAMIN B. SHEFFIELD. 

Benjamin B. Sheffield, a prominent business 
man, miller and banker of Faribault, was born 
at Aylesford, Nova Scotia, December 23, 1860, 
the son of Millidge B. and Rachel Sheffield. 
Both of his parents were natives, of Nova 
Scotia. His mother, whose maiden name was 
Rachel Tupper, was a member of a prominent 



3 6 4 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



family in Nova Scotia, and a first cousin of Sir 
Charles Tupper, now Secretary of the Domin- 
ion of Canada. She died in Faribault, October 
5, 1870. Millidge B. Sheffield was born at 
Aylesford May 2, 1S30. He came to Faribault 
in 1865, bringing his wife, his son Benjamin 
B. and a daughter Fannie (now Mrs. A. 
Blodgett, Jr., of Faribault). He first settled on 
what is now the county farm, but later en- 
gaged in the grocery business in Faribault. 
He afterwards purchased an interest in the 
Walcott Flour Mill, and, in 1880, bought the 
interest of his partners, and associated with 
himself his son, who had that year graduated 
with honors, from the Shattuck Military 
School. Besides his mill property he 
had large elevator interests, and was 
known as a substantial and successful 
business man. He was a man of spot- 
less character, and whose integrity was 
the highest. He did much, in an unostenta- 
tious way, to benefit his city and its people. 
He spent a part of each winter in the South, 
and died in Faribault October 15, 1899. Benja- 
min B. Sheffield was less than twenty years old 
when he assumed the management of the Wal- 
cott Flour Mills for his father. These mills 
were at that time four miles from any rail- 
road; carried a large indebtedness and had 
been a losing investment for all previous own- 
ers; but in spite of all obstacles young Shef- 
field made the project a financial success. Un- 
der his management the mill was rebuilt; its 
capacity enlarged, and after two years he had 
the satisfaction of seeing the property on a 
sound financial basis. In succeeding years he 
developed the business, brought railroads to 
the mill doors, and increased the capacity of 
the plant to 1,000 barrels. November 31, 
1895, the Walcott Mills were destroyed 
by fire. Mr. Sheffield immediately sent for 
contracting agents, and while the mill was 
still burning, planned for the construction of 
new mills of greater capacity. He organ- 
ized and became president of the Sheffield 
Milling Company, with a paid up capital of 
$200,000, and in about six months the new 
mill was completed and in operation. A 
little later they acquired the plant of the 



Crown Milling Company at Morristown. In 
addition to their milling interest they became 
largely interested in elevators. Mr. Sheffield 
is president of the Crown Elevator Company, 
which owns and operates a line of forty-five 
elevators in Minnesota, North Dakota and 
South Dakota, with offices at Minneapolis. Mr. 
Sheffield has always been closely identified 
with the progress of Faribault, always ready 
to encourage public enterprises with his in- 
fluence and private funds. He was one of the 
charter members of the Security Bank of 
Faribault, and has been its president almost 
from its foundation. He is a member of the 
Chamber of Commerce of Minneapolis. In 
politics he is a Republican. He served two 
terms as president of the city council, and has 
been twice mayor of Faribault. He was 
elected the first term by the largest majority 
in the history of the city, and upon his second 
candidacy there was no opposition. During 
his term of office the city public library was 
built, and he has been a member of the library 
board since its organization. Mr. Sheffield is 
a member of the board of trustees of the Shat- 
tuck Military School, and of the Seabury 
Divinity School. In February, 1900, he was 
appointed, by Governor Lind, one of the direc- 
tors of the State Institute for Defectives, 
including the State School for the Feeble- 
Minded, the State School for the Blind and the 
Deaf, and is also treasurer for these institu- 
tions. Mr. Sheffield is active and energetic 
and a ready speaker. He is a Knight Templar 
and a thirty-second degree Mason, and is a 
vestryman in Bishop Whipple's Cathedral 
Parish. Mr. Sheffield was married July 18, 
L889, in .Miss Carrie A. Crossette, daughter of 
H. M. Crossette of Faribault. They are the 
parents of two children, Blanch and Amy 
Tupper. 



HENRY M. RICE. 



Hon. Henry Mower Rice, pioneer and 
statesman, one of the most remarkable men 
of the Northwest, and a leader in the founding 




The Century PiiMishing S, Byraviiy Co Chicago" 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



36; 



of St. Paul, was, during his life time, prob- 
ably the most popular man in Minnesota, as 
he was certainly one of the most useful. Born 
in Waitsfleld, Vermont, November 29, 181G, 
he spent the larger part of his life in Minne- 
sota, engaged in herculean labors, and died, 
honored and lamented. January 15, 1894, at 
San Antonio, Texas, whither he had gone in 
pursuit of health. Mr. Rice sprang from the 
old American stock, identified with colonial 
times and the period of conquest and settle- 
ment. His paternal ancestor, Edmund Rice, 
came to this' country in 1039. The blood of 
colonial pioneers ran in his veins, and 1 lie vir- 
tues of an energetic and virile ancestry ani- 
mated his whole career. More than one of his 
lineage bore arms for their homes and their 
country in the early days. Jedediah Rice, his 
grandfather, was a soldier of the American 
Revolution. The maternal grandfather served 
in the French and Indian war, and was cap- 
tured in 1775 at the burning of Royalton, Ver- 
mont, and afterwards ransomed; while the 
paternal great-grandfather of Mr. Rice, who 
also served in the French and Indian wars, 
was captured at Marlborough in 1701, and re- 
deemed some years afterwards. The free 
schools and an academy gave the young man 
his early tuition; and at Richmond, Vermont, 
he studied law, a preparation which fitted him 
for masterly management of affairs, although 
he saw little active practice of the profession. 
In 1835 Mi\ Rice emigrated to the then fron- 
tier town of Detroit, Michigan, and first be- 
came known to fame in the location of the 
Sault Ste. Marie canal and other public works, 
authorized by the State of Michigan./"-- A dar- 
ing and enterprising spirit prompted Mr. Rice, 
two years later, to shoulder a pack, and make 
his way on foot, a distance of two hundred 
miles westward, to a country scarcely removed 
in character from that of an aboriginal wilder- 
ness. He traded throughout that region for 
a time, and, in 1839, settled at Fort Snelliug, 
as an attache of the sutler's department of 
the post. In 1840 he secured appointment as 
sutler at Fort Atkinson, Iowa, and soon after- 
ward made a highly important connection with 
the greatest of the fur-trading houses of the 



West, that of Pierre Chateau, Jr., & Company, 
of St. Louis. This brought him in contact with 
the Chippewa and Winnebago tribes of In- 
dians, and Mr. Rice controlled their trade in 
the interests of the St. Louis house. A num- 
ber of trading posts were established and 
controlled by him throughout the region, in 
which those tribes hunted the fur-bearing 
game, and by courage, coolness, fairness and 
tact, Mr. Rice came in time to exert a remark 
able influence, both over the red men 
themselves and the white hunters and trap- 
pers of the region. In 1816 the Winnebagoes 
exhibited their confidence in Mr. Rice by mak- 
ing him a delegate in lieu of a native chief, to 
represent them in the sale of their reservation, 
in Iowa, to the United States. Mr. Rice not 
only negotiated a useful treaty on this occa- 
sion, but secured the sale and opening to 
settlement of yet another reservation. In fact, 
during succeeding years, mainly as commis- 
sioner, in 1847 and in 1851-4 and 1803, Mr. Rice 
aided materially to secure accession to the 
United States of Sioux, Chippewa, and other 
lands, covering the greater part of the State 
of ^Minnesota. The history of the Indian 
treaties of the Northwest is filled with the 
story of Mr. Rice's efforts to protect the In- 
dians, and while opening the country to settle- 
ment, to initiate a policy toward the Indians, 
which would enable them to become self-sup- 
porting. Until the day of his death, there was 
no other white man in Minnesota who had the 
confidence and affection of the Chippewa tribe 
of Indians, to anything like the same extent 
as Mr. Rice. He was called by them "Wan 
bee-mah-no-min," or "White Rice." On Febru- 
ary 20, 1889, he was appointed by President 
Cleveland one of the commissioners to nego- 
tiate on the part of the United States, a treaty 
with the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota, for 
the cession of certain of their lands. As chair- 
man of this commission he effected a treaty 
whereby over three million acres of desirable 
land were ceded to the Government. A por- 
tion thereof, situated on the Red lake reserva- 
tion, has recently been thrown open to 
settlement. The St. Paul Dispatch, in an 
editorial, said of this treaty: 



366 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



''For the successful conduct of these nego- 
tiations, the chief — if not the entire — credit, 
is due to the Hon. Henry M. Rice. His selec- 
tion as one of the commissioners was the 
wisest possible choice which could have been 
made. It is a singular coincidence that exact- 
ly the same day of the same month, forty-two 
years ago, August 22, 1847, Mr. Rice succeeded 
in successfully concluding a treaty with the 
same band, ceding valuable lands to the people. 
His courage and experience, combined with his 
intimate knowledge of Indian character, en- 
abled him to carry through an undertaking 
attended by difficulty, which amounted to 
serious danger of bloodshed, so incensed were 
the Indians by their treatment in connection 
with the Winnebigoshish dam. The gain 
which is certain to result in the speedy set- 
tlement of northern Minnesota, and the 
utilization of the vast tract of millions of 
acres of valuable land, will soon be felt, and 
what has thus far been practically a wilder- 
ness, will soon rival in wealth and resources 
the more favored sections of the State.'' 

Through his early negotiations, Mr. Rice 
learned to appreciate the value of land eligibly 
located, and in 1S48 he bought from John R. 
Irvine, for four hundred dollars, a tract of 
eighty acres, lying between Seven Corners and 
St. Peter street, in the city of St. Paul, and 
fronting on the river, comprising a part of 
"Rice and Irvine's Addition" to the city. This 
property is now worth millions. Upon it Mr. 
Rice began systematic work for the develop- 
ment of a city, and in a large sense, thus be- 
came one of the founders of St. Paul. Streets 
and blocks were laid out, warehouses, a hotel, 
stores and houses were built, and all other 
steps were taken necessary for the develop- 
ment of a city. With a liberality which did 
honor to his heart, as well as credit to his busi- 
ness sagacity, Mr. Rice gave land for sites for 
churches, schools, hospitals and parks, and in 
the numberless ways suggested by his native 
fertility of resource, promoted the welfare of 
the community which grew into existence 
around and upon his holdings. To Rice county, 
named after him, he presented a library of 
historical and political works relating to the 
government, and to the city of St. Paul he gave 
Rice Park. He founded the town of Munising, 
Michigan, and was also, in 185C, the founder 



of Bayfield, Wisconsin, on Lake Superior. The 
second brick house ever built in Minnesota 
was erected at the corner of Third and Wash- 
ington streets, in St. Paul, by Henry M. Rice. 
As means increased, additional land was 
bought, and a claim of one hundred and twenty 
acres, which Mr. Rice called his farm, is now 
worth at least •?•'!, 000 an acre. Upon a portion 
of this latter tract is situated the home of 
Maurice Auerback, Esq., Mr. Rice's son-in-law. 
Several mansions were built by him upon "The 
Hill'' in St. Paul, and in later life he occupied 
an especially beautiful site on Summit avenue. 
Not only did Mr. Rice toil unceasingly for the 
welfare of St. Paul, but for the benefit of 
Minnesota. The Democrats of the Territory 
sent him to Congress in 1853, and re-elected 
him in 1855; and in Washington he secured 
much public-spirited legislation in aid of set- 
tlers, including the opening of land offices, the 
sale of military and Indian reservations, and 
the creation of post-offices and post roads. 
During that early period, Mr. Rice was the 
strong working influence at the National cap- 
ital in behalf of Minnesota. In 1857 the first 
land grant railroads in the Territory were 
endowed, and a surveyor general's office was 
established in St. Paul under acts whose pass- 
age Mr. Rice secured. He was also the 
author of the law extending the right of pre- 
emption over the unsurveyed lands in the 
Territory, and procured the passage of an 
act authorizing the training of a State Con- 
stitution, preparatory to the admission of 
Minnesota to the Union. The honor of election 
to the United States Senate, promptly ac- 
corded to Mr. Rice by the Legislature of the 
new State, was no more than a frank recogni- 
tion of his immense services to Minnesota. In 
18G5 he became the Democratic candidate for 
Governor of the State, but was defeated by 
.'S,47G votes. The Civil War broke out while 
Mr. Rice was in the Senate. John C. Breck- 
inridge, Robert Toombs, Stephen A. Douglas, 
Clement C. Clay, and other leaders of Southern 
sentiment, were his intimate friends — his in- 
timacy with Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Douglas 
being in part denoted by the fact that with 
them he built a row of three brick houses, 



1*m* 




(^Uu^foi (2< 



,^y 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



367 



called "Minnesota Row,'' on the corner of H 
street and New Jersey avenue, then a fashion- 
able part of the city, Mr. Rice living in the 
middle one. Mr. Rice labored to avert the con- 
flict of arms, which drenched the sunny South 
with blood, and brought sorrow to homes 
throughout the land; but, when these labors 
failed, Mr. Rice displayed uncompromising 
loyalty to the Union, and his kindness to the 
volunteers will never be forgotten while a 
Minnesota veteran survives to tell the lair. 
His house iu Washington and his purse were 
invariably open to Minnesota troops on duty in 
and near Washington, and personal attentions, 
more valuable always than money, were un- 
stinted. Mr. Rice served on very important 
committees of the Senate, including those on 
finance, post-roads, public lands and military 
all airs. lion. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, 
who was chairman of the committee on Mili- 
tary affairs, alluded frequently during his life- 
time to Mr. Rice's services on that committee 
in the most flattering manner, saying that at 
the time when the army was formed Mr. Rice's 
knowledge of army matters "was of greater 
service to the country than that of all other 
members of the committee." The first bill 
had been introduced, and the first speech 
made in favor of the "Northern Pacific Rail- 
road" in 1858 by Mr. Rice, and he was one 
of the four Minnesota incorporators of that 
road. The unaffected nature of the man 
was illustrated after retirement from the Sen- 
ate, by his acceptance for three terms of the 
position of treasurer of Ramsey county, Minne- 
sota, to which he was elected by handsome 
majorities. He made many improvements in 
the methods of the treasurer's office, but re- 
signed during his last term, on account of 
ill health. During nearly all his life he had 
suffered from pulmonary troubles, due to hard- 
ships and exposure in early days; and during 
the closing years of his life was obliged to 
spend the winter seasons in the South. His 
vigorous mind triumphed over physical weak- 
ness, however, to such an exteut, that he lived 
to the age of seventy-seven. He touched the 
active life of St. Paul at many points, and was 
president of the chamber of commerce for 



several years, member and president of the 
board of public works, president of the first 
Society for Relief of the Poor, president of The 
Old Settlers' Association, and a regent of the 
State University. Mr. Rice took an active in- 
terest in Masonry, having received the third, 
or Master .Mason's degree, June 2, 1851. The 
Senate of the State of Minnesota on Tuesday, 
April 11, 1899, adopted the following resolu 
tion, introduced by the lion. Ililer H. Horton, 
Senator from the Thirty-sixth District, Ram- 
sey county: 



"Whereas, By Act of Cougress, approved 
July 2, 1801, provision was made for placing 
in the National gallery of statuary, in the 
<'apitoI at Washington, by each State, of the 
statues of two of its deceased citizens, illus- 
trious for their historic renown or for distin- 
guished civic or military services, and 
whereas, the Hon. Henry M. Rice was, from 
the year 181<>, in which he negotiated a treaty 
by which a large portion of the territory now- 
comprising the State of Minnesota was ac- 
quired from the aborigines, until his death, 
pre-eminent in its service in the positions of 
territorial delegate, first United States Sena- 
tor, and main - other distinguished and useful 
capacities, as to entitle him to the commem- 
oration provided for in said act: Therefore, 
Resolved, by the Senate, the House of Repre- 
sentatives concurring, that the said Henry M. 
Rice be, and he is hereby designated as one of 
the persons to be thus honored, and that a 
suitable statue to represent him, be placed by 
the State in said National Gallery, upon the 
condition that said statue be furnished and 
placed in position without expense to the 
State." 



Adopted. Concurred in and adopted by the 
House, April 12, 1890. 

On March 20, 1810, Mr. Rice married Miss 
Matilda Whitall of Richmond, Virginia. To 
them were born one son and four daughters: 
Frederick D., a lawyer, practicing in St. Paul; 
Lizzie (now deceased), who was the wife of 
Maj. John B. Rodman, IT. S. N.; Matilda, wife 
of Mr. Maurice Auerback, and Rachel, wife of 
Mr. Luther E. Newport. 

[From "America's Successful Men," published by the 
New York Tribune.] 



3 r,8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



DOLSON B. SEARLE. 

The life of Judge Dolson Bush Searle, of 
St. Cloud, has beeu replete with honorable 
achievements, material success and social dis- 
tinction. It was nurtured in the East, his 
parents having been well-to-do members of a 
farming community in western New York, 
near the village of Franklinville, where the 
subject of this sketch was born, June i, 1S4G. 
His father, Almond D. Searle, who was of 
English ancestry, was a man of more than 
ordinary ability and culture. The family was 
prominent in the early history of England, the 
first Mayor of London having been a Searle. 
The mother of Judge Searle, nee Jane Ann 
Si nit, is of Scottish extraction and a lineal 
descendant of Sir Walter Scott. She is a 
highly cultured woman, and is still living, at 
the advanced age of four score years. The 
two grandfathers of our subject, both of whom 
were pioneer settlers in Whitehall, New York, 
fought in the War of 1812; while the great 
grandfathers participated in the Revolution- 
ary and Colonial wars. The boyhood of Judge 
Senile was passed upon the home farm and in 
attendance at the district school of the neigh- 
borhood. He graduated at the academy of his 
native town, and. upon the breaking out of 
the Civil War, enlisted as a private in Com- 
pany I, Sixty-fourth Regiment, New York 
Volunteers. During his term of service, which 
continued for about two years, he was engaged 
in the following battles, viz.: Fair Oaks, 
Seven Pines, Gaines Mills, Savage Station, 
White Oak Swamp, Malvern Hill, the second 
battle of Bull Run and the battle of Antietam, 
besides other minor engagements. Soon after 
his discharge from field service, which was 
granted by reason of disability, he re-enlisted 
in the regular army, and was detailed for 
clerical duty in the War Department at Wash- 
ington, D. C. Shortly afterwards he was dis- 
charged from the military service, by President 
Lincoln, to accept a civil position in the War 
Department, which he held for several years. 
During the period of this service he attended, 
and graduated at, the Columbian Law College 
of Washington. In his clerical capacity, Judge 



Sea ile had charge of an important branch of 
the business of the department, and the per- 
formance of his duties brought him into confi- 
dential relations with President Lincoln and 
Secretary Stanton, for whom he came to feel 
a warm affection. He was one of the audience 
in Ford's theater the night of the President's 
assassination; and perhaps no one in the 
whole assembly was more profoundly im- 
pressed with the incidents of that fatality than 
the young department clerk. Upon resigning 
his clerkship at Washington he came directly 
to St. Cloud, which city he has ever since called 
home. As soon as located here, he associated 
himself with Hon. E. O. Hamlin as a partner 
in the firm of Hamlin & Searle. This partner- 
ship was dissolved a year later, on the occasion 
of Judge Hamlin's removal to Pennsylvania, 
after which Mr. Searle practiced by himself, 
with constantly increasing success and broad- 
ening reputation. For six years he filled the 
office of city attorney, and gradually his serv- 
ices came into requisition beyond the limits of 
St. Cloud. In 1S80, as Republican candidate 
for the office of attorney for Stearns county, 
he was elected by a large majority, in spite of 
the fact that the county ordinarily went strong- 
ly Democratic. Two years later, and before 
the expiration of his term of service as county 
attorney, he was appointed United States dis- 
trict attorney for the District of Minnesota. 
He received his appointment from President 
Arthur and served until 1885, tendering his 
resignation in October of that year to Presi- 
dent Cleveland. In October, 1887, he was ap- 
pointed to the bench of the Seventh Judicial 
District of Minnesota. He still serves in this 
office, having been repeatedly and without op- 
position re-elected. In his judicial capacity he 
is acknowledged to have no superiors in the 
State. He has won special credit by his decis- 
ions in such causes as those brought against 
the notorious "Pine Land Rings" and the 
"Avon School Case." His declaration in the 
latter case was the most direct and emphatic 
ever issued by any court in this country, pro- 
hibiting sectarian prayers and religious in- 
struction in the public schools. During his 
years of general practice Judge Searle was at- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



369 



torney successively for the Northern Pacific 
Railway, the Minneapolis & Manitoba, the 
Great Northern and the "Soo v roads. In poli- 
tics he figured prominently previous to taking 
the bench, and always with loyalty to the Re- 
publican party. In 1S8G-7 he was a member 
of the Stale Central Republican Committee, 
and he played an influential part in the Nation- 
al campaign of 1884. In 1892 he was nominated 
for Congress from the Sixth District, and made 
a notably brilliant campaign, being defeated. 
however, by a very small majority. Judge 
Searle is a Knight Templar of the Columbia 
Commandery of Washington, D. C. ; also a 
Knight of Pythias; and he belongs to the order 
of Elks. As a member of the Grand Army of 
the Republic he is prominent, having been ap- 
pointed, October 24, 189G, aide-de-camp with 
the rank of colonel on the staff of the Com 
mander-in-Chief of that fraternity. He is now 
Department Commander of the Department of 
Minnesota, and was last year senior vice-com- 
mander. On February 1G, 1875, Judge Searle 
was united in marriage to Elizabeth Clarke, of 
Worcester, Massachusetts. The one child 
born to them died at the age of five years. 
Busy as the Judge has been in activities which 
resulted to his own benefit, his lias, neverthe- 
less, been far from a selfish life. His attitude 
towards his city has been always that of re- 
sponsible citizenship; and few, indeed, of pro- 
gressive enterprises have been instituted which 
have not received his hearty endorsement and 
substantial support. 



CHARLES P. NOTES. 

Charles Phelps Noyes was born April 24. 
1842, in Lyme, Connecticut, and is descended 
from wholesome English stock. His paternal 
line is as follows: Rev. William Noyes, rector 
of the church of Choulderton, Wiltshire, Eng- 
land, in 1621; his son, Rev. James Noyes, born 
in 1G08, who emigrated to America in 1G34. 
preached first at Medford, Massachusetts, in 
1G35, removed to Newbury, Massachusetts, and 
was the first pastor there. His son, Rev. James 
Noyes, born in Newbury, Massachusetts, in 
1G40, became the first pastor of the church at 
Stonington, Connecticut. His son, Capt. 



Thomas Noyes, was born in Stonington in 

1679, and his son, Col. Joseph Noyes, was also 
born in Stonington in 1727, and was a colonel 
in the Revolutionary War. His son. Col. 
Thomas Noyes, was bora in Westerly. Rhode 
Island, in 17.">4, and served as a lieutenant in 
the Revolutionary War in Washington's New 
Jersey campaign, at the battles of Trenton. 
Princeton, et al. He was president of the 
Washington Bank, of Westerly, Rhode Island. 
served as deputy to the Legislature of Rhode 
Island, and was Senator for many years. His 
son, Daniel Rogers Noyes. the father of Charles 
Phelps Noyes, the subject of this sketch, was 
born in Westerly, Rhode Island, August 22, 
1793. He served as lieutenant in the Third 
Regiment, Rhode Island Infantry, in the War 
of 1812, engaged in the defense of the Rhode 
Island coast. He was a man of good education 
and wide reading, and the greater pari of his 
life he was engaged in mercantile business at 
Lyme, Connecticut. He married Miss Phoebe 
Griffin Lord, a woman of rare ability, whose 
entire life was marked by a pure Chris 
tian character. She had much to do with the 
intellectual development of her native town, 
Lyme, and the "Phoebe Criftin Noyes" library, 
which stands on the site of the house in which 
Mrs. Noyes was born, was dedicated to her. 
Charles I'. Noyes belongs to the seventh gen- 
eration of the Noyes family in America. He 
received his primary education at Lyme, and 
later was at Williston Seminary, Last Hamp- 
ton, Massachusetts. He then went to New 
York City, and entered the banking house of 
Oilman, Son & Company, where he remained 
for some time, when he came west and located 
in Port Huron, Michigan. Here he engaged 
in the general mercantile business. In 1868 
he came to St. Paul, and in company with his 
brother, Daniel R. Noyes. bought an estab- 
lished drug business. The firm of Noyes, Pett 
& Company soon became Noyes Brothers, and. 
in 1871, Noyes Brothers & Cutler, one of the 
oldest landmarks of the city of St. Paul and 
State of Minnesota. Mr. Noyes served a short 
time in the Civil War as a member of the 
Twenty-second Regiment, National Guard of 
New York. During his long and active business 



37° 



RIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



career in St. Paul he lias held many positions 
of trust. At present he is trustee of the State 
Savings Bank, vice-president of the Capital 
Bank, and a director of the West Publishing 
Company. Mr. Noyes is interested in patriotic 
societies. He was one of the incorporators and 
the first president of the Minnesota Society of 
"Sons of the Revolution;" also was one of the 
incorporators, and is now governor of the So- 
ciety of Colonial Wars in Minnesota, and is 
also a member of the Minnesota Historical 
Society and the Rhode Island Historical So- 
ciety. He belongs to the Minnesota, the Com- 
mercial and the Town and Country Clubs. 

Mr. Noyes was married September 1, 1874, 
to Miss Emily Hoffman Oilman, daughter of 
Winthrop S. Oilman, of the city of New York. 
They have living four children, one daughter 
and three sons. 



CHARLES A. SMITH. 
Mr. Charles A. Smith, of Minneapolis, al- 
though an American by adoption, is Swedish 
by birth, having first seen the light of day in 
Ostergottland county, Sweden, December 11, 
1852. His father was a soldier in the Swedish 
army, having served in it for thirty-three 
years, after which he emigrated to America 
with ( 'ha lies and an elder sister. He reached 
Minneapolis on the 28th of June, 1867, where 
he joined two other sons, older than Charles, 
who had come there before him. Charles had 
received a part of his education in a rural 
school in Sweden, where he was taught the 
catechism and Bible history by rote, to the 
neglect of branches of more fundamental im- 
portance, such as writing and arithmetic. He 
took his first lessons in the English language 
in Wright county, in the old traditional school 
house, built of logs. Soon after he came to 
Minneapolis he was "boarded out" on a farm, 
which is now included within the limits of 
Minneapolis. His occupation consisted chiefly 
in herding cattle, for which he was compen- 
sated by receiving his board and clothing. 
While on this farm he showed his instincts of 
thrift by collecting a large quantity of hazle- 
nuts, selling them for seven dollars, and loan- 
ing the money out to his brother at ten per 



cent interest. He also showed quite a liking 
for study, employing all His spare time at his 
books. He was thus enabled to enter the Uni- 
versity of Minnesota in the autumn of 1872, 
where he studied so hard that his health broke 
down, and he was compelled to discontinue his 
collegiate work after he had been there only 
a year. After leaving the university he was 
engaged by J. S. Pillsbury & Company, who 
were in the general hardware business in 
Minneapolis. He remained with this firm five 
years, and in 1878 launched out for himself in 
the grain and lumber business, under the firm 
name of C. A. Smith & Company. With the 
aid of ex-Governor Pillsbury he built a grain 
elevator at Herman, Minnesota. He continued 
in this business, together with lumber and 
farm machinery, until July, 1884. He then de- 
cided to begin the manufacture of lumber at: 
Minneapolis, and returning there, remained 
in partnership with ex-Governor Pillsbury 
until 1803. In that year the C. A. Smith Lum- 
ber Company was organized and incorporated, 
Mr. Smith becoming president and general 
manager, and so continues. The company, lie- 
sides its regular business of manufacturing, 
also operates retail lumber yards in various 
parts of the State and in the Dakotas. Mr. 
Smith was early imbued with habits of econ- 
omy, and to this fact, in great measure, his 
success is due. Ever since his first commercial 
venture in hazlenuts, when he was a boy. he 
has faithfully followed the advice of "Poor 
Richard," "to take care of the pennies and the 
dollars will take care of themselves." He is a 
good specimen of the self-made man. He has 
always had more of "push" than of "pull," and 
this accounts for his prominence in the com- 
mercial life of the Northwest. Mr. Smith's in- 
terests are not limited by those of the firm 
which bears his name; he was one of the 
founders of the Swedish American National 
Bank, and other institutions in this city and 
outside of it. In politics, following the bent 
of the majority of Swedish Americans, Mr. 
Smith is a Republican, and he gives as much 
time to the interests of his party as his com- 
mercial activities will allow. He is not an 
office seeker, however, and has never held an 





Xl 



s& \ m\\ 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



371 



office, being content to be a counsellor of his 
party. He has been a member of the city, 
county, State and National conventions, and 
in 189G was on the ticket as Presidential 
elector, and was especially honored by being 
elected to cany the Presidential votes of the 
State to Washington. In religion he is a Lu- 
theran, and belongs to the English Lutheran 
Salem Congregation, and is one of its trustees. 
lie was also one of the organizers of that so- 
ciety. Aiming his oilier ecclesiastical activi- 
ties lie has a membership in the board of 
directors of the English Lutheran Seminary of 
Chicago, and holds the office of treasurer of 
the Evangelical Synod of the Northwest, lie 
was united in marriage, February It, L878, to 
Miss Johanna Anderson, whose father, Olaf 
Anderson, served in the Swedish Riksdag for 
several years, and then came to this country 
with his family in 1857, locating in Carver 
county. Five children were born of this union, 
two boys: Vernon A. and Carroll \V., and 
three girls: Nanna A.. Addie J., and Myrtle 
E. Smith. 



BENJAMIN F. NELSON. 

Benjamin Franklin Nelson is the head of 
the Nelson -Tenny Lumber Company, manufac- 
turers and dealers in lumber at Minneapolis. 
Mr. Nelson is a splendid example of the self- 
made man. and an instance in which the mak- 
ing has been well done. He was born of 
humble parents in Greenup county. Kentucky, 
May 4, 1843. His parents were natives of Som- 
erset county. Maryland. His father lost his 
health and the support of the family devolved 
upon the sons. This left Benjamin F. with 
little opportunity for schooling, and when sev- 
enteen years of age he engaged with a partner 
in the lumber business. This, after two years, 
was broken up by the war, and an attempt at 
farming was unsuccessful, for the same reason. 
Kentucky, although a slave-holding State, and 
sympathizing for the most part with the Con 
federacy, was controlled by the strong arm of 
the Federal power, and such of her sons as saw 
lit to enter the Southern army did so from a 



firm conviction of right and duty, rather than 
from loyalty to their State. Mr. Nelson was 
nineteen years of age when he enlisted in Com- 
pany 0, of the Second Kentucky Battalion, 
and went into active service under the cum 
mand of the Confederate general, Kirby Smith. 
He served successfully under Humphrey Mar- 
shall, Wheeler, Forrest and Morgan, and par- 
ticipated in the battles of Chickamauga, Mc- 
Inville, Synthiana, Shelby ville, Lookout Moun- 
tain, Mount Sterling and Greenville, besides 
numerous cavalry skirmishes. Mr. Nelson was 
in the thickest of the fight for over two years. 
In 1864, while on recruiting duty in Kentucky, 
he ventured into Federal lines as far as the 
Ohio river. He had secured a few recruits and 
was returning with them when he was captured 
and sent to Lexington. While he was confined 
in prison there, fourteen men were taken out 
and shot, two of them being recruits captured 
with Nelson, and for a time he was in danger 
of suffering the same fate on suspicion of being 
a spy. He was, however, sent to Camp Doug- 
las, in Chicago, where he was held until 1865, 
when he was sent to Richmond and paroled at 
the close of the war. Mr. Nelson returned to 
his home in Kentucky, where he was employed 
in a saw mill for a few- months, and then de- 
cided to try his fortune in the far West. He 
arrived at St. Anthony, Minnesota. September 
4, 1865, after spending one day in St. Paul. He 
was much impressed with the magnitude of 
the water power, and believed the falls would, 
eventually, be surrounded by a great city. Mr. 
Nelson went to work at rafting lumber, and 
when the season was over, took up a claim 
near Waverly, and built a house; but farming 
did not suit him, and he again went into the 
lumbering business. In 1872, Mr. Nelson 
formed a partnership with Mr. W. C. Stetson 
in the planing mill business. Their trade in- 
creased until they found it necessary to build 
another mill in order to take care of their or- 
ders. At this time they commenced dealing 
in lumber in a small way, which rapidly in- 
creased until 1880, when the partnership was 
dissolved. In 1881 Mr. Nelson associated with 
himself William Teimey and IT. W. McNair, 
and later, H. B. Frey was admitted to the part- 



.c 



BMKIRAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



persliip. Soon afterwards Mr. McNair with- 
drew and W. P. Brooks entered the firm. The 
business thus established is now conducted 
under the name of the Nelson-Tenney Lumber 
Company. This concern has two large saw 
mills, with a capacity of seventy-five million 
feet a year. Mr. Nelson is interested in various 
other enterprises. In 1887 lie bought the Min- 
neapolis Straw Paper Mill, and in 1888 the Red 
River Paper Mill at Fergus Falls. These were 
consolidated under the name of the Nelson 
Paper Company. In 1890, together with T. B. 
Walker, he bought the print paper mill in Min- 
neapolis, and the old and new companies were 
merged into the Hennepin Paper Company, 
operating at Little Falls. Mr. Nelson is also 
a director of the Metropolitan Bank. He com- 
mands the respect and confidence of his fellow 
citizens of Minneapolis in a marked degree, 
and has held various important public offices. 
In 1807 he was elected alderman of the First 
Ward, and was continued in office until 1885. 
When the Park Board was organized Mr. Nel- 
son was elected to service ill that branch of 
the municipal government. For seven succes- 
sive years he served as a member of the school 
board, and in 1894, when the question of the 
price of gas was submitted to arbitrators, Mr. 
Nelson was selected by the city as its represen- 
tative. In the same year occurred the great 
strike on the Great Northern railway, and Mr. 
Nelson was selected as one of the committee of 
citizens of Minneapolis to arbitrate in that 
dispute. Mr. Nelson was a member of the orig- 
inal building committee of the Minneapolis Ex- 
position; he nave a .ureal deal of his time to 
personal supervision of the construction of the 
building, and has been on the board of direc- 
tors of the Exposition ever since, and is now 
one of the owners of the property. Mr. Nelson 
is a Democrat in politics, but a man of broad 
and liberal views. He has served his party 
locally as an active worker on campaign coin- 
mil lees, and exerts a large influence in its 
plans and deliberations. Notwithstanding his 
extensive business and many public duties, Mr. 
Nelson has found time to see some of the world, 
having traveled extensively in Mexico, Europe, 
Egypl and the Holy Land. His religious con- 



nection is with the Methodist church, and his 
eminent business capacity was recognized in 
his selection as trustee of the Hainliiie Univer- 
sity. He has been twice married, first in 18<>!>, 
to Martha Boss, who died five years later, leav- 
ing two sons, William E. and Guy II. His 
present wife was Mary Fredinburg, who has 
one daughter. 



ALBERT A. AMES. 



Albert Alonzo Ames, M. I)., of Minneapolis, 
belongs to that city by virtue of many bonds. 
She claims him, not only as one of her promi- 
nent physicians and residents, but as an able 
participant in her official life, an earnest phil- 
anthropic worker, and a leader in various of 
her social organizations. His profession may. 
in a sense, be regarded as an inheritance; for 
his father, Alfred Elisha Ames, M. D., prac- 
ticed at Minneapolis before it had been chris- 
tened with that euphonious name, even before 
its birth as a town at all, the settlement being 
then indefinitely designated as a part of the 
Fort Snelling reservation. Albert A. was not 
born here, but at Garden Prairie, Boone coun- 
ty, Illinois, January 18, 1842. He was the fourth 
of seven sons, and was ten years id' age when 
his parents removed with their family to Min- 
nesota. In 1N74 his father died at Minneapolis; 
but his mother, Martha A. Ames, although 
aged, is still counted among the city's resi- 
dents. From ten to sixteen our subject at- 
tended the common and high schools of the 
place, graduating from the latter, which was 
at that time a department of the Washington 
school. Before the completion of his course 
he began earning money in the humble capac- 
ity of "printer's devil" and carrier, for the 
Northwestern Democrat, the first Minneapolis 
newspaper issued west of the river. In the 
summer of the next year. 1858, and soon after 
his graduation, he began the study of medicine 
and surgery, with his father for tutor. This 
initiatory work was followed by two prepara- 
tory and two regular courses in Rush Medical 
College at Chicago, and on February 5, 1862, 
he received his degree of M. D. In March fol- 



The C&tifu/y Publisftiiiy & Enymvnip Co Chi£ayo- 



CA. CC CLcaa-jl^ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



373 



lowing he returned to Minneapolis and entered 
into practice. But the Civil War was iu prog- 
ress, and, responding to the call of President 
Lincoln for troops, he assisted in organizing 
( "onipany B of the Ninth Minnesota Regiment, 
in which he enlisted. This regiment was al- 
lowed a furlough of two weeks after being 
formed, in order that the men might adjust 
I heir home affairs; but serious trouble with 
the Indians had broken out on the frontier, 
and it became necessary to recall the Ninth 
Regiment and despatch it al once to check the 
advance of the red men upon Minneapolis. Dr. 
Ames bad enlisted as a private, but he was 
now made orderly sergeant, and directed to as- 
semble his men for active service. Shortly 
afterward he was commissioned assistant sur- 
geon of the Seventh Regiment, Infantry Vol- 
unteers of Minnesota, with orders to report to 
that regiment, then on its way to relieve Fort 
Ridgeley, which was being harassed by the In- 
dians. Throughout three years of severe serv- 
ice, the young doctor did duty with his 
regiment, and attained, in July, 1864, to the 
rank of surgeon major. Like most veterans. 
Dr. Ames feels an enthusiastic interest in all 
reminiscences and relics of his soldier days, 
and he still cherishes in his possession the 
musket which was presented to him in the cere 
inony of his appointment as orderly sergeant. 
At the close of the war he returned to Minne- 
apolis, but not yet to locate there and await 
the development of a medical practice. His 
three years of military adventure had not been 
calculated to subdue his naturally restless and 
enterprising spirit; and in 1868 he set out for 
the Pacific coast, choosing the circuitous Isth 
mus route. Arrived in California, he engaged 
in the newspaper business, and in a short time 
had risen to the dignity of managing editor of 
what was then the foremost journal of the 
coast, the Alta California. But this enterprise 
was abandoned in the autumn of 1S74. when 
the death of his father necessitated his return 
to Minneapolis, in which city he has since made 
his home. Here his energies were soon en- 
listed in public affairs. From his earliest man- 
hood lie had taken a lively interest in political 
matters, his general news being such as char- 



acterized those styled "War Democrats." As 
early as 1867, and before his Pacific sojourn, 
he had been elected as a representative of Hen- 
nepin county to the Slate Legislature on what 
was known as the "soldiers' ticket;" and, in 
1875, after resuming his residence in Minne- 
apolis, he served as a member of the city coun- 
cil, and in the following year was elected 
''centennial mayor" of Minneapolis. He re- 
ceived two subsequent elections to the office 
of Mayor, in 1882 and 1886, respectively. In 
the last-named year the Democrats nominated 
him for Governor of Minnesota, and a vigorous 
campaign ensued. By this time he had gained 
a following which, for size and enthusiasm, 
has, perhaps, never been equaled by that of 
any resident of Minneapolis; and, although 
there had been a previous record of large Re- 
publican majorities, the one which now de- 
feated Dr. Ames was so small that the result 
of the election was doubtful for days. His 
election to Congress was similarly defeated, 
as. also, that to the post of Lieutenant Gov- 
ernor. A fortunate result of Dr. Ames' can- 
didacy for Governor, however, was the 
founding of a soldiers' home in the State. For 
this he had stipulated with the Democratic 
party, through its convention, as the condition 
of his consent to nomination; and although 
the Republicans won the day. they supported 
the bill proposed by their opponents, which 
materialized in a fine establishment for aged 
and indigent veterans, beautifully situated at 
the junction of the Minnehaha river with the 
Mississippi. Dr. Ames was appointed surgeon 
of the home, and served as such for over five 
years, resigning only under stress of profes- 
sional duties, by which his time has since been 
largely absorbed. His present political stand 
is independent, yet represents always that best 
(dement of Democracy which contemplates 
greater freedom and equality through the up- 
lifting of the toil-enslaved masses. Dr. Ames 
belongs to the <;. X. Morgan Post, No. 4, G. 
A. R., and as a Mason, Knight Templar and 
Knight of Pythias has officiated in the follow- 
ing capacities: Master of Hennepin Lodge, 
Nd. 4. Order of Masons; High Priest of St. 
John's Chapter. No. !>; Eminenl Commander 



374 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



of Zion Commandery, No. 2, Knights Templar; 
Grand Generalissimo of the Grand Command- 
ery, Knights Templar in Minnesota; Chancel- 
lor Commander of Minneapolis Lodge, No. 1, 
Knights of Pythias, and Grand Chancellor of 
Minnesota and Supreme Representative from 
this jurisdiction to the Supreme Lodge of the 
World. IL' has also been on the charter list 
of No. 44, Benevolent and Protective Order of 
Elks, and was the first Exalted Ruler of this 
pioneer lodge of the Northwest. Dr. Ames, 
together with liis wife and their daughter 
Maurine, resides in Oak Parle, a north subur- 
ban section of Minneapolis. 



WILLIAM II. GRIMSHAW. 

William Harrison Grimshaw, of Minneapolis, 
present United States marshal for the District 
of Minnesota, was born in Philadelphia, De- 
cember 6, 1853. His parents were Loth natives 
of that cily and of English descent. His father, 
Robert E. Grimshaw, was a prominent con- 
tractor and builder. The maiden name of his 
mother was Mary Page Nicholson, and she was 
a descendant of an old and prominent Phila- 
delphia family; she died in 1856, when her 
son William was three years of age. He was 
the fourth child of a family of two sons and 
three daughters. In 1855 Robert E. Grimshaw 
removed with his children to Minneapolis, 
where he subsequently remarried. His son, 
William, has therefore been a resident of Min- 
nesota practically since infancy. He was 
educated in the Minneapolis public schools, 
graduating from the high school in 1869. Inher- 
iting the tasle and disposition of his father, he 
thoroughly educated himself as an architect, 
opened an office in Minneapolis and was suc- 
cessful in his profession from the first, becom- 
ing one of the best known architects in the 
Northwest. He designed and superintended 
the erection of thirteen of the public school 
buildings and many private houses, si ore build- 
ings, etc., in Minneapolis and several county 
court houses in different portions of the State. 
Meantime he was prominent and influential in 
the local affairs of the citv. He has alwavs 



been a staunch Republican and has taken an 
active working part iu politics. In every po- 
litical campaign for the past twenty-five years 
his services have been in demand, and he has 
made speaking tours throughout the State. 
In 1882 he was elected to the Legislature and 
was a prominent member of the House during 
the session of 1883. He was a member of sev- 
eral important committees, and it was he who 
presented the name of Hon. C. K. Davis to the 
joint session as a candidate for the United 
States Senate. Mr. Davis was not elected at 
this time, however, Hon. D. M. Sabin succeed- 
ing to the honor. Mr. Grimshaw was appointed 
to his present position by President McKinley, 
March 17, 1899. He has made a most efficient 
chief constable of the Federal authority, and 
his administration has been successful and ac- 
ceptable to an eminent degree. Marshal Grim- 
shaw is a man of versatile talents and 
accomplishments. He can look after evil doers 
who break the law, design and build a mam- 
moth building, make a speech, conduct a polit- 
ical campaign, write an essay — all with equal 
force and facility. He is of a literary turn, a 
ready and polished writer, and has made many 
notable contributions to the public press and 
the leading magazines. For the past seven 
years he has edited the "Chess Columns" of 
the Minneapolis Journal. He is, too, of scho- 
lastic tastes and has a reputation for his pro- 
found knowledge of mathematics. He was 
married in July, 1879, to Mrs. Marion C. P-liss, 
of Ionia, Michigan. They have one child, a 
son, named William Elwood -Grimshaw, who 
is a student in the State University. 



CUSHMAN K. DAVIS. 

The Honorable Cushman Kellogg Davis is 
prepared to establish his claim to a Puritan 
and Pilgrim ancestry unsurpassed by any 
strain that ever settled in, or founded a New 
England colony. His lineage through his 
mother is traced directly to Robert Cushman, 
(he Puritan financial agent, who procured land 
grants in Massachusetts from King James and 
lilted out the "Mayflower" and the "Speedwell"' 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



375 



for their historic voyage to the bleak New 
England coast in search of freedom to worship 
God. No ship ever landed on an American 
shore a more famous passenger list than was 
carried by those primitive vessels, and no voy- 
ageurs ever exhibited more fortitude on sea 
or land. Among the passengers of the "May- 
flower," and the last survivor of them all, was 
Mary Allerton, who became the wife of Thomas 
Cushman, son of Robert the Puritan, and a 
man of strong and sturdy character. Cushman 
K. Davis was born in Henderson, Jefferson 
county. New York, June 1G, 1838, the son of 
Horatio Nelson Davis and Clarissa Cushman, 
who was a lineal descendant of Thomas Cush- 
man and Mary Allerton. Before the close of 
the year in which he was born, the family re- 
moved to the Territory of Wisconsin, so that 
his entire life, practically, has been passed in 
the Northwest. His father, a pioneer, and a 
man of ability, became prominent in the affairs 
of a State to which he had emigrated while it 
was still a Territory, serving as Senator sev- 
eral terms in the Legislature of Wisconsin, and 
also serving nearly four years as captain in 
the Twenty-eighth Wisconsin Regiment during 
the Civil War. The early education of Cush- 
man K. was acquired in the frontier schools 
of the Territory, and the first one which he 
attended was in a log school house. That was 
the prevailing style of school house in the Ter- 
ritory of Wisconsin fifty-five years ago, and 
for some years later. He attended Carroll Col- 
lege in Waukesha until he had completed the 
studies of the junior year, and then entered 
the University of Michigan, from whose clas- 
sical course he was graduated in 1857. Like 
many eminent men who achieve greatness for 
themselves, he graduated very young in 
years, but with the intellectual cultivation and 
power of mature manhood. Mr. Davis took up 
the study of law, and prepared himself for 
practice, but in 1862 enlisted in the Twenty- 
eighth Wisconsin Infantry, and was elected 
first lieutenant of Company B. His service 
was in the Vicksburg campaign, and subse- 
quently in Arkansas. He was a member of the 
expedition that captured Little Hock, and con- 
tinued to perform his duty in the field with 



a division of the army which had no oppor- 
tunity for brilliant achievements. His health 
was much broken by service in the miasmatic 
climate and exposure in the neighborhood of 
the pestilential swamps of Arkansas, so that 
before the close of 1864 he tendered his resig- 
nation and returned to his home. Immediately 
thereafter he settled at St. Paul, Minnesota, 
which had even then more than local fame as 
a health resort. A stranger, without prestige 
or adventitious aids, without even letters of 
introduction from influential friends, he began 
the practice of law. He was favored with nat- 
ural ability, ambition, courage, and the power 
of strenuous application, and with such facul- 
ties he won his way, step by step, holding 
firmly any ground gained by the force of his 
will, and that driving, imperious necessity, 
which is sometimes the best capital to insure 
rapid and permanent advancement. He mas- 
tered the philosophy and principles of the law, 
and was faithful to his clients, whether the 
fees received were large or small. Within i wo 
years his opportunity to gain distinction at the 
bar came to him, in his engagement to defend 
George L. Van Solen, indicted for murder. It 
was a celebrated case, because of the promi- 
nence of the accused, and the strong network 
of evidence woven around him by skillful pros- 
ecution. Even down to the present time mem- 
bers of the bar cite the case, and quote it on 
account of the interesting and unique features 
developed during the trial, and the skill dis- 
played by the young lawyer in releasing his 
client from the net, and securing a verdict of 
•not guilty." The case won him fame and more 
clients. He continued in the practice with in- 
creasing business and marked success, and won 
additional renown, in 1878, by his defense of 
Judge Sherman Page, on trial before the Sen 
ate of Minnesota under articles of impeach- 
ment. In this case he was associated with 
other able counsel, but the issue extended and 
broadened his well-earned fame, especially 
when the defense was both able and success- 
ful. The Judge was acquitted. Mr. Davis has 
been at. all times devoted to the law. He re- 
gards it not simply as one of the learned pro- 
fessions, but the greatest of them all in the 



37^ 



BIOGRArHY OF MINNESOTA. 



opportunity it affords for intellectual growth 
and the exercise of keen analytical powers. 
Above all else, he esteems it as the chief 
instrumentality for securing justice between 
man and man, as well as between nations. The 
systems of jurisprudence in the States, the 
laws of the United States and international 
law, have engaged his profound admiration 
and for many years commanded his deepesl 
thought and most strenuous application. That 
he has not applied himself to the law simply 
for the purpose of acquiring wealth or gaining 
professional renown, is evidenced by the fact 
that he has never accepted a salary from a 
corporation agreeing to render it exclusive 
service, although his talents would have com- 
manded an enormous salary at any time 
during the last twenty years. lie has preferred 
a general practice, with freedom to accept the 
cause of the client who first applied for his 
services. He has therefore appeared as fre- 
quently against corporations as for them in 
the courts of his State. The records of the Ap- 
pellate Courts disclose the history of his eon 
nection with the most important litigation 
carried on in Minnesota for the past thirty 
years. Notwithstanding his long service in 
public office, his continuance as the head of the 
firm of Davis, Kellogg & Severance, shows his 
strong preference for the practice of law. Mr. 
Davis, when yet a very young man, attracted 
attention, both as an advocate in the forum 
and a political orator, and in 18(i7 he was 
elected to the House of Representatives in 
Minnesota. The following year he was ap- 
pointed United States district attorney, an 
office whose duties were in line with his pro- 
fession, and in harmony with his taste. After 
serving five years, however, he resigned to ac- 
cept the nomination for Governor, offered by 
the Republican party. He took the initiation 
in securing the enactment of a statute regu- 
lating the traffic of railroads, both as to pas- 
senger and freight rates. He conceived that 
the right of such regulation was inherent in 
the State, and proceeded to realize the concep- 
tion in law. He declined a renomination for 
Governor to resume the practice of his profes- 
sion, which was continued without further 



interruption until lie was chosen by the Leg- 
islature of 1887 to represent his Slate in the 
Senate of the United States, lie was re-elected 
in L893, and again in L899, so that he still has 
ai hast live years as Senator. Before the close 
of his tirst term Senator Davis attracted more 
than average attention as a figure in National 
politics; and before the close of his second 
term he had become famous, both for National 
and international statesmanship. As chair- 
man of the Senate Committee on Invalid Pen- 
sions he was largely instrumental in securing 
the enactment of a pension law, so broad and 
just in its provisions as to receive grateful ac- 
knowledgment from the soldiers, and com- 
mand the approval of the taxpayers. This 
alone is an achievement on which the fame of 
any statesman might rest securely through 
the coming ages. He was the champion and the 
most effective instrumentality in securing the 
improvement of the Government canal at Sault 
Ste. Marie. It was inadequate to the enormous 
demands of the commerce of the Great Lakes, 
unless the lock could lie speedily constructed 
and the channel could be broadened and deep- 
ened. The demand was for immediate beginning 
and early completion. In the emergency Sen- 
ator Davis conceived the idea of having the 
work done by contract in advance of an appro- 
priation, thus pledging the Government to 
make from time to time appropriations suffi- 
cient to cover the contract price, so that it 
might be available as needed, and the public 
work of so great importance might not be com 
polled to wait on the humor of Congress for 
partial appropriations in accordance with the 
general practice of the Government in con 
structing its public works. The work on the 
canal was pushed with amazing celerity, and 
its completion not only relieved the congestion 
and gave a new impetus to the agriculture, 
commerce and manufactures of the Northwest, 
but was also a tribute to the genius of the 
Senator, whose conception saved so much time 
on the w 7 ork of construction. At the beginning 
of his second term. Senator Davis was placed 
on the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, 
and in four years became chairman of the com- 
mittee. His study of international law and 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



377 



diplomacy was so thorough that he was soon 
recognized in the Senate as authority on all 
questions affecting the relations of our Gov- 
ernment with other powers, and on the whole 
subject of international law. An appointment 
to the chairmanship of that committee not only 
confers distinction, but in times of contention 
with foreign nations fixes a responsibility from 
which a timid or a weak man may well shrink. 
He opposed the policy of President Cleveland 
toward Hawaii, in 1896, in a speech of great 
power, which attracted favorable notice and 
comment throughout the country. His under- 
standing of the essence of the issue between 
Great Britain and Venezuela, growing out of 
the disputed boundary, enabled him to mark 
the course and establish the lines on winch the 
dispute was settled by arbitration and treaty 
stipulations. As chairman of the com- 
mittee he had charge of the treaty providing 
for the annexation of Hawaii; and when the 
treaty failed to receive the votes of two thirds 
of the Senators, essential to the ratification of 
a treaty, he boldly prepared and secured the 
passage of a joint resolution which effected 
the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands with- 
out regard to the treaty as a whole. It was a 
commendable piece of diplomacy, as the resolu- 
tion required only a majority of the votes in 
each House to give it the force of law. During 
the period immediately preceding the opening 
of hostilities with Spain, on account of Cuba, 
Senator Davis was a busy num. He drafted 
and offered the report of his committee on the 
strained relations of our Government with 
Spain, due to the destruction of the battleship 
".Maine." He reported to the Senate the reso- 
lutions demanding the withdrawal of Spa in 
from Cuba and the adjacent waters, and em- 
powering the President to employ the military 
and naval forces of the United States to effect 
the removal, if the Spanish government should 
fail or refuse to comply with the demand. His 
course throughout the critical period was 
marked by dignified statesmanship and judi- 
cial temper, such as to evidence his high 
qualification for the weightier and yet more 
delicate responsibility placed upon him by the 
President in selecting him as a member of the 



High Joint Commission which assembled in 
Paris during the autumn of 1898 to negotiate 
a treaty of peace. He was one of the ablest 
and most patient members of that commission. 
The conferences were sometimes vexatious and 
the outlook discouraging; but the Treaty of 
Paris, signed December 10, 1898, by all of the 
American and Spanish commissioners, is a 
grand triumph of brilliant diplomacy and pro- 
gressive statesmanship on the part of the rep- 
resentatives of the United States. Senator 
Davis is a many-sided man. He is author, ora- 
tor, student of history and of the biographies 
of Shakespeare and Napoleon. He wrote a 
book on "The Law of Shakespeare," and his 
library contains a magnificent collection of 
Xapoleon books and portraits. He has dis- 
cussed in magazine articles the Government's 
foreign policy, and the construction of a canal 
around Niagara Falls by the United States, 
and a deep waterway thence to the Atlantic. 
He is thoroughly an American in lineage, char- 
acter, instinct and patriotism. As a public 
servant. Senator Davis works hard and con- 
scientiously. His committee assignments sug- 
gest the versatility of his talents, estimated 
by the body of which he has been a member 
for more than a dozen years — on the Judiciary, 
on Foreign Relations, on Territories, on Pacific 
Railroads, on the Census, and on Forest Reser- 
vations. He is always candid and courageous, 
never a time-server. He spoke with timely 
pertinence and unanswerable logic in anticipa- 
tion of the action of President Cleveland in 
L894, in sending United States troops to Chi 
cago to protect the Government's property, 
and restore public order during the riots inci- 
dent to the great strike. His patriotism is 
above the partisan, as his statesmanship is 
above the politician. He has creative ability 
and constructive genius, and stands in the fore 
rank of the men relied upon to formulate the 
Nation's policy in the treatment of new ques- 
tions as they arise. He has the incorruptible 
integrity and historic fortitude which gave to 
the Puritans character and individuality and 
success. Mr. Davis is a member of the Grand 
Army of the Republic, and worships with the 
Congregationalists. He was married, in 1880, 



37§ 



BIOORAI'IIY OF MINNESOTA. 



id Anna Malcolm Agnew, of St. Paul; A man 
of prominence in the affairs of (lie State says 
of Senator Davis: 

"I have lived in the State of Minnesota all 
my life, and have known personally all the 
public men of both parties. I do nut hesitate 
to say, that in my opinion, Senator Davis pos- 
sesses more of the elements of greatness than 
any other citizen of the Stale, living or de- 
ceased. He is a man of many parts, and in 
whatever lighl you view him you are impressed 
with his versatility of resources. As an advo- 
cate before a jury, he ranks with Webster. 
Pierce and Choate, and as an orator and public 
speaker he has no rival in the Northwest, lie 
has a marvelous literary style, peculiarly his 
own and distinctly American. It is a source 
of wonder to his friends how such a busy man 
as he has been all his life could acquire such a 
classical style and literary finish as a writer. 
He is an omnivorous reader, and seems to have 
retained and stored away every little point of 
history, ancient or modern. He is entirely 
familial' with the writings of Darwin. Spencer, 
Huxley and Voltaire, and is a close student 
of Shakespeare. He is, without doubt, the 
only man in the entire Northwest to-day who 
ranks equally high as author, orator and 
statesman." 



HARLAN P. ROBERTS. 

Harlan P. Roberts, of Minneapolis, is a 

native of the State of Ohio, having been 
born in Wayne. Ashtabula county, De- 
cember 5, 1854. His father, the Rev. George 
Roberts, was born in Cambria county, 
Pennsylvania, and was a minister in the 
Congregational church for many years, con- 
tinuing in that profession until the year of 
his death, which occurred in 1857. The first 
wife of Rev. George Roberts was a Miss 
Hughes, of Ebensburgh, Pennsylvania, who 
died in the year 1825. His second wife was 
Miss Ann J. Marvin, to whom lie was united in 
1820. Twelve children were born to them, of 
whom Harlan was the eleventh. One of the 
cousins of Rev. George Roberts was Samuel 
Roberts — "Llanbryn Myr," commonly known 
in his country as "S. R." — who was quite a 
famous Welsh writer. Before the Civil War 



he founded a Welsh colony in Tennessee, but 
when the war broke out they were driven away 
from their adopted Slate, and a number of 
them returned to their fatherland. Our sub 
ject commenced his education in the county 
schools of Ashtabula county, Ohio. At the age 
of nine, he was sent to Mt. Pleasant. Iowa, and 
entered Howe's Academy, continuing in his 
studies i here for two years, preparatory to col- 
lege. At the completion of his course in this 
academy he returned to his native Stale and 
matriculated al Oberlin College, lb- finished 
the course here and graduated in 1875. He 
then entered the theological department of 
Vale College al New Haven. Connecticut, and 
completed the prescribed course in three years, 
graduating in L878. He lost no time in finding 
a field for his ministerial work, and in the 
same year of his graduation went to Silverton, 
Coin ado, where he took charge of the Con- 
gregational church. His name is identified 
in that town with the construction of a fine 
church building, which was effected to a great 
extent by his own personal efforts. In 1879 
he was chosen county treasurer of San Juan 
county, Colorado, and held that office until 
1881. Upon withdrawing from the ministry he 
determined to study law, and accordingly en- 
tered the office of the Hon. N. E. Slaymaker, 
who at that lime was practicing in Silverton, 
bul who now resides in Detroit, Michigan. 
After leading law with Mr. Slaymaker for 
about two years he was admitted to the bar in 
1883. He remained in Silverton only a year 
after engaging in law practice, and from 
thence removed to Minneapolis, continuing in 
his chosen profession in that city. He is in 
legal practice at the presenl lime, and has 
made a specialty of corporation and real-estate 
law, having built up a large and remunerative 
practice in thai field, lie is at the present time 
counsel for the receiver of the city bank, and 
is attorney for other large and important in- 
terests. As might be presumed from his theo- 
logical training, his ecclesiastical interests are 
with the Congregationalists, and he belongs to 
the Park Avenue Congregational church of 
Minneapolis, engaging in the active work of 
I hat society. During the season of 181181), he 




7?i£, (Ztitury Pul/ltsfwtff & Cnycavmy Co Chicaner 




QuU^ 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



379 



was honored with the election to the office of 
president of the Congregational Club of Minne- 
sota. Mr. Roberts was united in marriage to 
Miss Margaret L. Conklin, of Binghamton, New 
York, October 3, 1SSS. Mrs. Roberts is a de- 
scendant in the direct line from Governor 
Bradford, of colonial fame. Two daughters 
were born of this union: Margaret E. and 
Leslie May. 



HENRY A. CASTLE. 



Henry Anson Castle is the son of a New 
England family, but a native of Illinois, born 
at Columbus, Adams county, August 22, 1841. 
His elementary education was supplemented 
by a course at McKendree College, from which 
he graduated in 1862, the honorary degree of 
A. M. being subsequently conferred upon him. 
("lose upon his graduation, the Civil War being 
in progress, he enlisted as a private in the Sev- 
enty third Illinois Infantry Regiment. Four 
months later he was promoted to the post of 
sergeant major. With his regiment, which be- 
longed to Sheridan's division of the Army of 
the Cumberland, he participated in some 
stirring service, which included the Perryville 
campaign, the advance on Bowling Green and 
Nashville and the battle of Stone River. In 
the latter encounter he was so seriously 
wounded as to necessitate his discharge from 
service. Upon his recovery, however, he pro- 
ceeded to raise a company for the One Hundred 
and Thirty-seventh Illinois. He was unani- 
mously elected captain of this company, which 
he commanded throughout its service. As a 
congenial field of professional activity, Captain 
Castle adopted the law. He was admitted to 
the bar by the Supreme Court of Illinois and 
began practice at Quincy. In connection with 
his legal studies and practice he also, at inter- 
vals, wrote editorially for the Quincy Daily 
Whig. But his army experience had under- 
mined his health, and the appearance of the 
serious symptom of lung hemorrhage deter- 
mined him to give up his professional work 
and seek the bracing air of Minnesota. In July, 
1866, he arrived at St. Paul, where he resolved 



eventually to make his home and engage in 
business. His period of recuperation, however, 
he spent in Anoka and St. Cloud, during most 
of which time he was connected, as an 
editorial writer, with the Anoka Union. It 
was 1868 when he returned to St. Paul, 
with arrangements already consummated for 
opening a wholesale stove depot for the 
firm of Comstock, Castle & Company, of 
Quincy, of which he had become a mem- 
ber. His connection with the Anoka Union 
he retained for three or four years after leaving 
St. Cloud, and for six years he successfully 
conducted the stove enterprise. In 1874 he 
resumed his chosen profession of the law, with 
his office at St. Paul. In 1876 a slock com- 
pany was organized which effected a purchase 
of the St. Paul Dispatch from Mr. H. P. Hall. 
The Dispatch was a Republican organ, and 
Captain Castle, having become known as an 
earnest exponent of that party, was made (ires 
idenl of the company and editor of I he paper. 
With the exception of a short time in 1S80, 
he maintained this dual relation to the Dis- 
patch until 1885; indeed, during the last three 
years of that period he was its sole proprietor 
;is well as its editor-in-chief. Meantime he had 
become much interested in real estate, and in 
favor of this line of enterprise he abandoned 
his journalistic career, in 1886, turning his 
whole attention to his new interests, which 
were chiefly in suburban property. Captain 
Castle has held a large number of public offices. 
Few men come into touch with their commu- 
nity through, more numerous and various ave- 
nues. He was a member of the State Legisla- 
ture of 1873, and figured prominently as the 
champion of Hon. C. K. Davis in the campaign 
which resulted in his election as Governor. 
Two years later Governor Davis appointed 
Captain Castle Adjutant General of Minnesota. 
In 1883 he was appointed oil inspector by Gov- 
ernor Hubbard. The latter position he held 
for four years. In February of 1892 President 
Harrison appointed him postmaster of St. Paul. 
Although so desirable and lucrative a position, 
such was the general recognition of his party 
claims that no other candidates opposed them- 
selves to him. He held this office until Novem- 



3 8o 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



ber 1, 1S96, although this date was several 
months later than the expiration of his four- 
years' term. His able and devoted service as 
postmaster paved the way to his appointment, 
<m May IT, 1897, as auditor for the Post Office 
Department. He removed to Washington, 
where he still resides and performs the func- 
tions of his high position. Apart from remu- 
nerative offices. Captain Castle has been an 
honorary member of many public organiza- 
tions, and in many lias done gratuitous service. 
He has officiated as president of the Library 
Association of St. Paul, of the Minnesota Edi- 
torial Association, and of the Chamber of Com- 
merce. He has been commander of the Loyal 
Legion of Minnesota, Department Commander 
of the G. A. R., secretary of the State Home for 
Soldiers' Orphans, and was for twelve years 
president of the board of trustees of the 
Minnesota Soldiers' Home. In politics Cap- 
tain Castle has long been a recognized and 
respected force throughout the State. His 
executive ability makes him a tine or- 
ganizer, and for nearly ten consecutive years 
he was the most active agent of the Republican 
State Central Committee, on which he served 
as chairman in 1884, during the memorable 
Blaine and Logan campaign. His vigorous ami 
aggressive work, both on the stump and in the 
press, has been a potent influence, determining 
for good or ill the fortunes of many men. Al- 
though he enjoys a wide personal acquaintance 
with the newspaper fraternity, it is not too 
much to say that he is universally regarded by 
its members with esteem and affection. Of the 
O. A. R. and Loyal Legion, also, he is a cher- 
ished comrade. In 1897 Captain Castle pub- 
lished "The Army Mule and Other War 
Sketches" — a series of humorous papers which 
he had written some time previously, and 
which had been read at meetings of the Loyal 
Legion. This book has been highly approved 
by literary critics and has proven a financial 
success. On April IS, 1865, at Quincy, Illinois, 
Captain Castle was married to Miss Margaret 
W. Jaquess. Seven children were born of this 
union. Of the three sons, the eldest, Charles 
W., now first lieutenant of the Sixteenth In- 
fantry, 1 T . S. A., graduated in 1894 from the 



West Point Military Academy, and rendered 
efficient service as aide-de-camp to Major Gen- 
eral Brooke during his terms of duty as Gov- 
ernor General of Porto Rico and Cuba. 



.IESSE M. HODGMAN. 

The native place of the late Jesse Monroe 
Hodgman, of Red Wing, Minnesota, was Hart- 
land, Windsor county, Vermont; the date of 
his birth, February 17, 1818. He was reared 
in Hartland, and, after acquiring an elemen- 
tary education in the public schools of his home 
county, he went to New Hampshire to attend 
the Meriden Seminary. After completing his 
studies at that institution, he returned to Ver- 
mont and took a course of training in the mili- 
tary school at Norwich, which was conducted 
under the auspices of the State. In the fall 
of 1854 he came west, visited Red Wing and 
resolved eventually to locate there. His affairs 
in the East, however, he had left in an unset- 
tled condition, which necessitated his return 
for their adjustment; and if was not until 1856 
that he became a permanent resident of Red 
Wing. For about four years after settling in 
this city he was engaged in commercial pur- 
suits, then, in 1860, he entered into a partner- 
ship with T. P.. Sheldon in the forwarding and 
commission business. As a member of the firm 
thus formed Mr. Hodgman was actively en- 
gaged for about seven years; but in 1867, the 
state of his health having become inconsistent 
with the exactions of business life, he retired. 
In 1868, however, and again in 1S78, he was 
elected mayor of the city of Red Wing; and 
the manner in which he met the contingencies 
and fulfilled the trusts of that high office 
throughout the years of his incumbency was a 
perpetual proof of the sound judgment and 
untainted conscience which characterized him 
in all the affairs of life. Mr. Hodgman was a 
married man, having been united to Miss Har- 
riet Kellogg, at Red Wing, May 13, 1862. 
Leonard W. Hodgman, of Red Wing, is the 
only son of this union. Mr. Hodgman identified 
himself with Christ church parish. In 1862 he 
was elected a member of its vestry and was an- 
nually re-elected until Easter, 1S85, when fail- 











-*» 






/%/, J>t o~t?£y<?^< <*W 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



38l 



ing health compelled him to decline a re-elec- 
tion. His death took place at his home in Red 
"Winy on the 11th day of April, 1887, severing 
him from many warm friends in the community 
in which for so many years he had been a 
beneficent and cherished factor. 



ERASTUS S. EDGERTOX. 

The late Erastus Smith Edgerton, one of 
the earliest and most prominent bankers of 
St. Paul, was born at Franklin, Delaware 
county, New York, December 9, 181<>. His 
grandfather, Nathan Edgerton, was one of 
the pioneers, and the most prominent man 
in that then newly settled section of the 
country. He came from Franklin, Connecticut, 
in 1703, after which place lie named the town 
of Franklin, New York. The father of our sub- 
ject, Erastus Edgerton, was the first white 
child born in the township in which the village 
of Franklin is situated. His great-grandfather 
on his mother's side was Col. Solomon Willis, 
a man of mark in old Colonial days. Inning 
served both in the French and Indian War and 
the War of the Revolution, in the latter as com- 
mander of a Connecticut regiment. His grand- 
father on his maternal side, Dr. Azariah 
Willis, also settled at Franklin at a time when 
almost the entire country between the head- 
waters of the Delaware and Susquehanna riv- 
ers was still an unbroken wilderness, he being 
one of the first associate judges of Delaware 
county. His father dying in 1837, the manage 
ment of a considerable estate devolved upon 
Erastus S., while he was still a minor, from 
which early period dates the commencement 
of his active business life. In the spring of 
1S50 he went west, going first to Oshkosh, Wis- 
consin, and then, in 1852, to Rockford, Illinois. 
In June, 1853. he first visited Minnesota, find- 
ing a village of about three thousand popula- 
tion at St. Paul, and one of about one thousand 
at St. Anthony, the west side of the river being 
still occupied by the Sioux Indians, and the 
only development of the water power at Minne- 
apolis heing an old government saw mill. Lo- 
cating at St. Paul, and engaging in the banking 
business with the late Charles N. Mackubin, he 



soon became recognized as a financier of more 
than ordinary ability, and the firm of Edgerton 
& Mackubin soon took rank as one of the lead- 
ing and most responsible houses in the West. 
In 1858 the partnership was dissolved, Mr. Ed- 
gerton continuing the business on his own 
account. During the troublous and exciting 
times following the great financial crash of 
L857, lie exhibited in a marked degree that 
promptness of decision, energy of action, and 
unswerving integrity which were prominent 
traits in his character. Disposing of real es- 
tate at almost nominal prices, which has since 
become worth hundreds of thousands of dol- 
lars, he hesitated at no sacrifice necessary to 
enable him to meet every obligation and to 
maintain the credit of his bank. As a result he 
passed through the ordeal in safety, redeeming 
fully the issues of the State Bank, of which 
he was the owner, meeting promptly the de- 
mands of every depositor, and preserving in- 
tact the credit which afterwards became the 
foundation of the large fortune which he sub- 
sequently accumulated. Naturally conserva- 
tive in disposition, but sagacious and of a 
sound and independent judgment, his opinions 
on financial subjects, although frequently op- 
posed to popular ideas, were usually found 
justified by results. Believing that the loan of 
Slate credit to thi' .Minnesota laud grant rail- 
roads, in 1858, as provided for in the so-called 
"five million loan bill," would be disastrous to 
the State credit, he was one of the very few 
who vigorously opposed that measure. After 
the bill had been passed by the Legislature, 
and confirmed by an almost unanimous vote of 
the people, the event was celebrated by a pa- 
rade of a number of its most zealous advocates 
through the streets of St. Paul, who, when 
they arrived in front of Mr. Edgerton's bank, 
halted and caused their band to play the ''dead 
march" for his benefit. He came to the door, 
thanked the crowd for their "polite attention," 
and told them that while he had opposed the 
passage of the act which they so unanimously 
favored, he expected to live to vote for the pay- 
ment of the bonds to be issued under it, and to 
see them just as unanimously voting for their 
repudiation, which prediction was eventually 



3& 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



fulfilled to the letter. In 1864 Mr. Edgerton 
organized the Second National Bank of St. 
Paul, of which he became the president and 
largest stockholder, and which, under his able 
management, soon became widely known as an 
exceptionally safe and successfully managed 
institution. He also subsequently became in- 
terested as a stockholder in banks located in 
New York City, Chicago, Virginia, Montana, 
several in Minnesota outside of St. Paul, and 
several in the Dakota s. Many of these he 
helped to organize, and in a considerable num- 
ber was a director. In addition to these en- 
terprises and investments in the line of his 
special vocation as a banker, he was, during 
the active portion of his life, not infrequently 
engaged in other business operations of a dif- 
ferent character and on an extended scale. For 
several years he was one of the principal pro- 
prietors of the important mail and stage route 
running from Catskill on the Hudson to Delhi 
on the Delaware, which, previous to the build- 
ing of the New York and Erie Railroad, was 
the main line of travel between New York City 
and the entire portion of New York Stale 
embraced by the Delaware, Susquehanna and 
Chenango valleys. In 1863 he became inter- 
ested in the fur trading and outfitting business 
in that portion of the Hudson Bay Company's 
territory which now constitutes the Province 
of Manitoba. The operations of the company 
of which he was a member and the chief finan- 
cial manager, eventually assumed very consid- 
erable proportions, and embraced in the direct 
importation from England of large quantities 
of goods, as well as the exchange of goods with 
the Indians and the half-breeds for furs and 
buffalo robes, and the shipment of the latter 
to the United States and Europe. While in no 
sense a politician in the ordinary meaning of 
the term, and during his residence in Minne- 
sota taking no active part in public affairs, his 
opinion and advice were not infrequently 
sought by those in official positions, and es- 
pecially in regard to financial questions affect- 
ing the public credit, and upon several occa- 
sions he, although not a member of that body, 
was invited to address the, Legislature upon 
questions of that character. Like most men of 



originality of thought, Mr. Edgerton's individ- 
uality was so strongly marked as to leave a 
lasting impression upon those with whom he 
was brought in contact, and there were few 
among the pioneer business men of St. Paul 
who will be longer or more vividly remem- 
bered. By his kindly assistance a considerable 
number of young men were helped to educa- 
tional and business advantages which enabled 
them to attain to positions which, but for his 
timely aid, it is improbable that they would 
ever have been able to reach. His charities, 
which were unostentatious and thoroughly 
practical, w 7 ere numerous and liberal to an ex- 
tent probably in excess of those of any other 
person who ever lived in St. Paul, especially in 
the direction of provision and care for the aged 
and infirm, while his generosity to his relatives 
was as exceptional in degree as such liberality 
is unusual in ordinary experience. In 1814, Mr. 
Edgerton was married at Cannonsville, New 
York, to Miss Eliza Cannon, of that place. 
Their only child, a daughter, died at Saint Paul 
while yet an infant. Mrs. Edgerton was a most 
estimable lady and greatly beloved by all 
those with whom she was brought into inti- 
mate relations. After his retirement from act 
ive business Mr. Edgerton resided in the city 
of New York, although much time was spent 
in travel, entirely in this country, however, 
with the exception of one trip to Europe. He 
was fond of equestrian exercise, and was an 
accomplished horseman, and his erect and com- 
manding figure and beautiful and spirited 
Kentucky horse became familiar objects to the 
frequenters of New York Central Park. He 
died at his old family home at Franklin, New 
York, April 13, 1893. Mrs. Edgerton survived 
her husband only about one year. 



THOMAS H. SHEVLIN. 

Thomas H. Shevlin, a prominent lumber 
manufacturer of Minneapolis, and an extensive 
owner of pine lands and saw-mills, is a native 
of the State of New York, and was born Jan- 
uary 3, 1852, in Albany. His parents were of 
the sturdy Scotch-Irish stock. In June, 1867, 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



383 



when he was only fifteen years of age, he en- 
tered the employ of Messrs. Sage, McGraw & 
Company, and while connected with this Ann 
he acquired a good knowledge of the lumber 
business. Twelve years later, in 1879, he came 
west 1o Muskegon, Michigan, and entered the 
employ of Mr. T. \Y. Harvey, a well-known 
lumber dealer of Chicago. He remained with 
Mr. Harvey only a short time, however, and 
on January 1, 1880, was engaged by S. C. Hall. 
About a year later, in 1881, while carrying on 
the business for Mr. Hall, in addition thereto 
he went into business on his own account, as- 
sociating with himself Mr. Davies and others 
as partners, under the linn name of Shevlin, 
Davies & Company. In 1882, he was chosen 
treasurer and manager of the S. C. Hall Lum- 
ber Company of Muskegon, Michigan, which 
had just been formed. He was successively 
chosen treasurer of the Hall & Ducey Lumber 
Company of Minneapolis, in 1886; manager of 
the Hall & Shevlin Company (incorporated), in 
1887; and president of the Shevlin-Carpenter 
Company, in 1892. This latter concern was 
formed by the consolidation of the Hall & 
Ducey Company and the Hall & Shevlin Com- 
pany, occasioned by the death of Mr. Hall in 
1888. January 1, 1895, Mr. Shevlin established 
the J. Neils Lumber Company of Sauk Rapids, 
Minnesota, and was elected its president. In 
1896 he became president of the St. Hilaire 
Lumber Company (incorporated). Mr. Shevlin 
has confined himself closely to his chosen busi- 
ness all through life, and this concentration of 
energy is one secret of his success. Although 
he takes an interest in political affairs, he lias 
never sought or held any office of a political 
nature. Mr. Shevlin was united in marriage, 
in 1882, to Miss Alice A. Hall, of Muskegon, 
Michigan. Three children have been born to 
them, one boy, Thomas Leonard, and two girls, 
Florence and Helen. 



ALPHEUS B. STICKNEY. 

Alpheus Beede Stickney, virtually the 
founder and now president of the Chicago- 
Great Western Railway, was born in the vil- 
lage of Wilton, Franklin county, Maine, June 



27, 1840. He is a member of one of the oldest 
New England families, and belongs to Hie 
ninth generation of the descendants of Will- 
iam Stickney, of Frampton, Lincolnshire, Eng- 
land, who settled at Holly, Massachusetts in 
""' 1:l,ll 'i' part of the Seventeenth Century 
His father was Daniel Stickney, who was born 
a1 Hallowell, Maine, in 1804. He was in early 
manhood a mechanic, and subsequently in suc- 
cession a school teacher, a CJniversalist clergy- 
man, and the editor and publisher of the 
"Loyal Sunrise," a newspaper of Presque Isle, 
Maine, which acquired considerable promi- 
nence and influence at the outbreak of the War 
of the Rebellion. The maiden name of his 
wife, the mother of A. It. Stickney, was 
I rsula Maria Beede. horn at Sandwich 
New Hampshire, in 1813. Mr. Stickney's 
'•arly life and surroundings were plain and 
simple. His ..duration was obtained and 
completed in the New Hampshire common 
schools and academies of half a century 
ago. He was a poor boy and all the cir- 
cumstances prevented his obtaining a college 
training. He had to help himself even through 
the district school, and the money with which 
he purchased his algebra (price 75 cents) he 
'■allied by picking up and drying "wind fall" 
apples from his grandfather's orchard, and sell- 
ing them for two and a half cents a pound, 
while at intervals he worked at shoemaking. 
But he was unusually industrious and perse 
vering, and he acquired very rapidly the rudi- 
ments of a good scholastic education. When 
he was but seventeen years of age he began 
teaching and was thus engaged for two years. 
In the second year of his experience as a peda- 
gogue, lie began the study of law under the 
instruction of Hon. Josiah Crosby, of Dexter. 
Maine, and was so engaged for nearly three 
years. In 18G1 Mr. Stickney came to Minne- 
sota and the same year was admitted to the 
bar, in Stillwater. He was not able to at once 
enter upon the practice, however, and for 
about two years was employed in his former 
vocation of school teaching, reading his law- 
books and studying his chosen profession as 
best he could in the meanwhile. In 1863 he 
engaged in active practice at Stillwater and 



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P.IOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



so continued for six years, <>r until 1S09, when 
he removed to St. Paul. Not long after his 
location in St. Paul, Mr. Stickney entered upon 
the work of building and operating railroads. 

His experience in this work lias 1 n so long 

and so large that the details cannot here be 
given and not even well summarized. He first 
built the line from Hudson to New Richmond 
and later to River Falls, which has since been 
incorporated into the Omaha or Northwestern 
system. In 1872 he took the management of 
a little road called the "St. Paul, Stillwater 
& Taylor's Falls," between St. Paul and Cum- 
berland, Wisconsin, and Stillwater in connec- 
tion with the line from Hudson to Clayton, and 
this road was also, in time, absorbed by the 
( hnaha. In 1880 he was superintendent of con- 
si ruction for the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Man- 
itoba, now the Great Northern. In 1882 he 
built the Cannon Valley line — eighty miles in 
length — in Minnesota, which was owned and 
operated as a part of the Rock Island system 
until June, 1899, when it was purchased by 
Mr. Stickney, its builder, and became a part of 
the Chicago-Great Western. In 1883 he began 
the monumental work of his life, the con- 
struction of the great American railway sys- 
tem now called the Chicago-Great Western. 
Of the magnitude and importance of this mag- 
nificent enterprise, to the country, this is not 
the place to speak. Some of the results may 
be mentioned, however, although they are well 
known and appreciated. The first passenger 
trains on this road between Minneapolis, St. 
Paul and Chicago, started from their respec- 
tive terminals on the evening of August 1, 
1887, and ran through in thirteen hours and 
thirty minutes. This was the inauguration of 
the present fast train service in the Northwest. 
Mr. Stickney's new departure shortened the 
time of the round trip to Chicago to two nights 
and one day — the one day being spent in Chi- 
cago — and the other roads had to follow suit. 
The Great Western, under Mr. Stickney's man- 
agement, made other important innovations, 
which in time were adopted and became estab- 
lished features in railway operating. The re- 
organization of the Chicago-Great Western 
was an original plan of Mr. Stickney's devising, 



by which the bondholders, having a mortgage 
lien of about twenty million dollars upon the 
entire property of the railroad company, ex- 
changed their securities for its capital stock, 
leaving the corporation without a dollar of 
bonded debt or mortgage. This condition is 
unique in the entire history of railroading. 
In 1886 Mr. Stickney organized in Chicago a 
railroad enterprise of inestimable value to 
transportation interests. He purchased nearly 
4,000 acres of land, known as "the Stickney 
tract," near the city, with the design of con- 
centrating thereon the interchange of freight 
traffic between the railways. This property 
he conveyed to the Chicago Union Transfer 
Company, at net cost plus six per cent interest. 
Mr. Stickney was also the originator and pro- 
jector, in 1886, of the St. Paul Union Stock 
Yards, at South St. Paul. He is a man of ideas 
and has an apt capacity for putting them on 
paper. His published work on "The Railway 
Problem" is a standard on the subject and is 
in use as a text-book in the department of po- 
litical economy in many American colleges. 
His fifty-page pamphlet on the financial ques- 
tion, published in 1896, went through three 
editions and obtained a circulation of 20,011(1 
copies. His services as a public speaker are 
mole often demanded than they can be given. 
While most of Mr. Stickney's time is absorbed 
in the business enterprises with which he is 
identified, he finds ample time for the enjoy- 
ment of his home and the society of his inti- 
mate friends. He has a large library, and when 
fatigued and overworked he finds relief and 
relaxation in reading. Mr. Stickney was mar- 
ried in 1801 to Miss Kate W. Hall, daughter 
of Dr. Samuel Hall, of Collinsville, Illinois. 
Of this marriage there are seven children — 
Samuel C, Katherine, Lucile, Ruth, Charles 
A., Emily and Jean. Mrs. Stickney died at St. 
Paul, December 2, 1899. 



CHARLES A. ZIMMERMAN. 

Charles Alfred Zimmerman, pioneer, promi- 
nent business man, artist and photographer of 
St. Paul, was born in Strasbourg, France, June 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



38; 



21, 1844, the son of Edward and Barbara 
(Schoettel) Zimmerman. His father was a na- 
tive of Strasbourg, where he was educated and 
trained as an expert accountant. During the 
French Revolution, in 1848, he left his native 
land and came with his family to New York, 
where he resided for a time. He then went to 
Elizabeth, New Jersey, and remained until 
1854, when he removed to Chicago, Illinois. In 
1850 he came with his family to St. Paul. He 
was in the employ of Auerbach, Finch & Schef- 
fer for several years, served as city school in- 
spector, and was well known and respected as 
an upright and worthy citizen. He died in 
July, 1807. His wife, the mother of our sub- 
ject, survived until October, 1872. Their son, 
Charles A., was educated in the public schools 
of New York and a private school at Elizabeth, 
New Jersey, and as a boy. when eleveu years 
of age, living in Chicago, he took down in 
writing the dictations of Rev. J. V. Watson, a 
noted pulpit orator, and editor of the North- 
western Christian Advocate. After coming to 
St. Paul he attended the public schools. In 
1857, with the aid of Comstock's Philosophy, 
and a treatise on chemistry, lie constructed a 
camera obscura, with which he made his first 
experiments in picture making. Shortly after 
this he entered the employ of J. E. Whitney, 
the pioneer daguerreotypist and photographer, 
where he remained until the outbreak of the 
War of the Rebellion. The moment he reached 
the age of eighteen he enlisted in Company G, 
Sixth Regiment Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, 
and was with his company in the marches, 
skirmishes and battles against the Sioux In- 
dians in Minnesota and Dakota. He went south 
with his regiment in June, 1804, to Arkansas, 
and later to Alabama, participating in the 
siege and capture of Mobile. He was mustered 
out of the service with his regiment at Fort 
Snelling, August, 1805. He then returned to 
the photographic business in St. Paul, and in 
1807 married Miss Ida Frombau, who was at 
that time teaching in the Baldwin School, lo- 
cated on the present site of the new custom 
house. He became the owner of the Whitney 
Photo Studio in 1808, and in 1S72 located at 
No. 9 West Third street, remaining there until 



1894, and building up one of the largest enter- 
prises of its kind in the country. He also car- 
ried on the sale of photographic materials in a 
small way until 1S7:'., when lie admitted his 
brother, E. O. Zimmerman, into the latter busi- 
ness, which they enlarged, and conducted un- 
der the firm name of Zimmerman Brothers, 
which is to-day one of the largest houses of 
the kind in the Northwest. In 1880 Mr. Zim- 
merman went into the transportation business 
on Lake Minnetonka, where he placed the 
steamer ''Nautilus" in the passenger line, fol- 
lowing it in 1881 with "The Lotus," "Hattie 
May," "Minneapolis" and "Saucy Kate." In 
1882 he formed a partnership with Hon. W. D. 
Washburn, who added his large steamer "City 
of St. Louis" to the fleet. In 1883 he incor- 
porated the Lake Minnetonka Navigation Com- 
pany, the stockholders being J. J. Hill, Peyton 
S. Davidson of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and him- 
self, adding to the fleet the "Mammoth Belle" 
of .Minnetonka, Mr. Zimmerman being general 
manager of the company. After operating for 
eighteen years in the passenger and excursion 
traffic on Lake Minnetonka, during which time 
not a single passenger met with injury, the 
company liquidated in L897. During all these 
years Mr. Zimmerman conducted his photo- 
graphic business, and found time to do much 
literary work as well, contributing many tech- 
nical essays and papers to the photographic 
journals. He also became well known as an 
able writer and illustrator for the magazines 
of the day. His out-door sports with gun and 
dog, published in Scribner's Magazine. For- 
est and Stream, and Chicago Field, and pa- 
pers to children, published in St. Nicholas, 
were happily writ ten and widely read. The 
writer remembers well the pleasure with 
which he first read, over twenty years ago 
(October, 1879), an article in Scribner's month- 
ly magazine — "Field Sports in Minnesota" — 
written and illustrated by Mr. Zimmerman. 
He has also become favorably known as an 
artist in water color painting, having produced 
numerous hunting scenes which have become 
celebrated, among which "The Tight Shell," 
and ''Trying for a Double," published in 
chromo lithograph some years since, are known 



3 86 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



and admired wherever the true sportsman 
exists. In his profession, his ability has been 
fully recognized, and he has kept well to the 
front in the development of the photographic 
science. He is a true lover of his art, and 
gives strict personal attention to the details of 
his profession. His studio at No. 101 Easl 
Sixth si reel is a repository of priceless his- 
torical value, drawn upon largely by news- 
papers and periodicals for portrait illustration. 
In 1900 Mr. Zimmerman sold the copyright of 
his water color illustrations to Longfellow's 
"Hiawatha" to The Taber Prang Company, 
who publish it as a Christmas book and panel. 
Pleasant and cordial in manner, progressive in 
liis ideas, pre-eminent in photography, he is 
able alike with camera, brush and pen. 



JACOB BEAN. 



This well known old citizen and prominent 
lumberman of Stillwater, was born in Upper 
Stillwater, .Maine, January 10, 1837. His native 
town was quite a lumber center, and in early 
life he engaged with his brother in logging 
operations for about three years. He then 
went to California, where he remained a year. 
Returning to Maine, he was associated in part- 
nership with his brother and General llersey 
for live years. His first business experience, 
however, was in a store, in which he was first 
a clerk, and afterwards one of the proprietors. 
Mr. Bean located in Stillwater, Minnesota, in 
ISO:',. Almost immediately he became identi- 
fied with the extensive lumbering firm of Her- 
sey, Staples & Bean, at that time one of the 
largest logging, manufacturing and general 
merchandise corporations in the Northwest, 
owning mills and factories and a vast area of 
standing pine in the country tributary to the 
River St. Croix. Upon the death of the senior 
partner, .Mr. Samuel F. Hersey, in 1875, a di- 
vision of the property of Hersey and Staples 
resulted in these large interests becoming the 
property of Hersey and Bean, and Mr. Bean 
became their general manager and director. 
Under his judicious care they have vastly in- 
creased in value, and, making additional pur- 



chases of standing timber from time to time 
and turning the same into money, constituted 
a portion of the work to which Mr. Bean de- 
voted his time for several years. Mr. Bean 
has made other investments in the Northwest. 
He has large and valuable mining interests in 
Montana. Recently he has acquired large in- 
terests in pine timber in whal was formerly 
the Mille Lacs Indian reservation in Minne- 
sota, and in company with Samuel McClure, 
of Stillwater, and the firm of Foley Brothers 
& Guthrie, he was one of the incorporators of 
the Foley-Bean Lumber Company. Among the 
many enterprises with which Mr. Bean is con- 
nected, no other gives him more satisfaction 
I han his big lumber plant at Milaca, Minne- 
sota, which consists of a saw-mill with a 
capacity of 40,000,000 feet per season, a planing 
mill turning out 200,000 feet of lumber daily — 
both mills being lighted by electricity and run- 
ning day and night — a large general store, 
lumber yards, shops, etc. In its mills and 
pineries the Foley-Bean Lumber Company fur- 
nishes steady employment to three hundred 
men. The past logging season it operated six 
big camps. Its logs are landed on upper and 
lower Rice lakes, and towed by the company's 
steamboat from the lake to a point in the How- 
age, where they are sluiced through the dam. 
All the necessary improvements in conned ion 
with the dams, the rivers, and the lakes in the 
company's district have recently been made, 
and are in excellent condition for log driving. 
etc. It is estimated that the company owns 
sufficient timber to supply its needs for the 
next six years at least. The Hersey & Bean 
Company of Stillwater, Minnesota, is one of 
the largest and strongest lumber companies in 
the Northwest. It cuts about 25,000,000 feel 
of logs annually, and manufactures an equal 
amount of lumber at the mills. It employs 
two hundred and fifty men the year round, 
has a river frontage on the St. Croix of more 
than a mile and a quarter, with complete facil- 
ities for handling its logs and lumber products. 
Besides his elegant home in Stillwater, Mr. 
Bean has a magnificent residence at "Alham- 
bra," near Los Angeles, California, where his 
family usually resides during the winter sea- 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



387 



sons, returning to their Minnesota home at 
the approach of summer. Of Mr. Bean's per- 
sonal characteristics, a friend who has known 
him long and intimately writes: 

"Mr. Bean's life has been one of unceasing 
activity and productive of most satisfactory 
results. In his declining years, surrounded by 
a charming family and all the agreeable ac- 
cessories of wealth, he can look back with 
pleasure and pardonable pride upon his record 
of a stainless life, the imperative duties and 
obligations of which he has never neglected. 
His benefactions to every public and private 
enterprise, which required and deserved ma- 
terial aid. are well known; but never has he 
desired to stir a little dust of praise. The en- 
tire course of Mr. Bean exemplifies, in all his 
life work, what can be done by any other youth 
with ambition to rise above his native environ- 
ment, and whose aims and desires lie in the 
direction of rounding out and shaping a noble 
manhood." 



HORACE B. WILSON. 

of the many men who came to the Territory 
of Minnesota in its earliest days, and, by their 
energy, push and hard work, have done so 
much towards developing its resources, and 
laying broad its foundations, resulting in its 
present greatness and prosperity in all that 
goes to make up what is destined, at no remote 
period, to become one of the first States in our 
Union, is Horace I'.. Wilson, of Red Wing. He 
descended from a good old Puritan ancestry, 
was born in Bingham, Maine, March 30, 1821. 
His father, Rev. Obed Wilson, was a leading 
and influential citizen of that State during its 
early history, and intimately associated, for 
many years, with its civil and religious aff;iirs. 
having been a member of the Territorial con- 
vention of .1820 and 1821 that framed the Con- 
stitution of the State, and a Representative to 
the first Legislature that convened after its 
adoption. Subsequently, he was repeatedly a 
member of both House and Senate. Conse- 
crated to the ministry in his youth, he became 
a zealous and successful clergyman of the 
Methodist Episcopal church, labeling early 
and late for nearly forty years, never sparing 



himself, but promptly responsive to every call 
of human need and Christian charily. He was 
a ready, effective and eloquent speaker, a wise 
and judicious counselor, and an active and ear- 
nest worker in various fields of usefulness; a 
good man, and a devout Christian, lie gave 
his sons as favorable opportunities for securing 
a liberal education as his circumstances ami 
the character of the educational institutions 
of the State, at that time, would allow. One 
son died at Waterville College, and three were 
educated at Maine Wesleyan College. Horace 
It. graduated from that institution in 1840, and 
came west, to Ohio, the next year, where 
he was engaged in teaching in the Cin- 
cinnati graded schools for a time, subse- 
quently removing to New Albany, Indiana, 
where he organized the first graded schools 
ever taught in that city. He continued to re- 
side there, teaching ami practicing civil engi- 
neering until the spring of 1858, when he 
removed to Red Wing, Minnesota, having ac- 
cepted the position of Professor of Math- 
ematics and Civil Engineering in Hamline 
University, then located at Red Wing. He 
continued to discharge the duties of that posi- 
tion with signal efficiency until the close of the 
collegiate year, in June, 1862. Conscientiously 
believing it his duty to assist in suppressing 
the Rebellion then raging in the southern por- 
tion of the Union, he resigned his professorship 
and enlisted in Company F, Sixth Regiment 
Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, was elected 
captain, and served as such till the close of 
the war. During these three years he rendered 
distinguished service in the suppression of 
the Indian outbreak in Minnesota in lS(i2, and 
afterwards in the campaign which resulted in 
the capture of Mobile, and the occupancy of 
Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. At the 
close of the war he returned to his educational 
work in the Slate, serving as county superin- 
tendent of schools in Goodhue county for four 
years, and as Slate Superintendent of Public 
Instruction for five years. To this latter office 
he brought the rich experience and the admin- 
istrative ability which he had gained in his 
former positions. With this equipment, and 
directed by a spirit of strictest integrity and 



388 



tUOOKAI'HY OF MINNESOTA. 



persistent application to hi,s duties, he was 
selected by Gov. Eorace Austin to take charge 
of the undeveloped school system of the grow- 
ing State, and entered upon his duties August 
1. L870. 1 1 is mil easy to comprehend the difti- 
culties that beset the superintendent of those 
early days, in a State covering 83,000 square 
mill's, with few railroads, with towns scattered 
and no transportation except by stage. Those 
were days when the normal schools were fight- 
ing for a foothold, when high schools were 
limited to a few of the larger towns; when 
there were tew libraries, and where teachers' 
institutes, recently introduced, had yet to be 
established and made efficient. It was to this 
condition of affairs that Mr. Wilson applied 
himself without stint. Those who have had no 
acquaintance with the life of a new State need 
to be reminded that all pioneer life is a life of 
conquest, in some of its forms, and that only 
men of courage, endurance and intellectual 
vigor, figure with effect, in The result. In full 
accordance with this law Mr. Wilson asso- 
ciated with himself men like Prof. W. W. 
Payne, Supt. Sanford Niles, Judge Harwood, 
Allen J. Greer, and many others of equal fame, 
and whose life work has become an honorable 
pari of the subsequent history of the State. 
These were Mr. Wilson's support in planting 
the teachers' institutes in remotest hamlets, 
and, by means of them, gave the teachers of 
the State the only available preparation for 
their duties. To illustrate what that work was 
in those early days the following incident is 
well worthy of record: In the spring of 1872 
an institute had been appointed at Fairmount. 
'Mr. Wilson and his associate. Superintendent 
Xihs. were to attend and conduct it. They 
left the railroad at Madelia to travel the re- 
maining forty mill's by team. The Watonwan 
river had overflowed its banks, and was with- 
out a bridge. They did the only tliinii that 
men who never turn back could do, they hired 
a large skill', took the buggy apart, ferried (he 
wheels over, then the body, and came back 
again to swim the horses across. They then 
crossed I he prairie, to find Plum creek so 
swollen that they were obliged to stop over 
nighl and wait for the stream to fall. Such 



trips by stage and team were common in those 
days. Mr. Wilson was noted for giving his 
personal supervision to every department of 
the educational service; he visited and lec- 
tured at all his institutes, and gave instruction 
in nearly all. He. also, first established the 
four weeks' training schools, and the legisla- 
tion which he secured in the interests of 
education is still upon the statute books. It 
may be said, in brief, that the active interest 
which Mr. Wilson expressed in the common 
schools of the people, he also showed towards 
all higher departments. He was, ex-officio, 
secretary of the State Normal Hoard, and, 
dining his administration, was closely and in- 
telligently associated with its advancement. 
He was. also, ex-officio, a regent of the State 
University of Minnesota, and always, from 
principle, and through his sympathetic inter- 
est, assumed his share of responsibility in the 
conduct of its affairs. He will be remembered 
for the work he has done, and as a man repre- 
sentative of the sterling virtues of sincere 
devotion to public interests, and for his perfect 
integrity in all his personal relations. In poli- 
tics Mr. Wilson has always been a Republican, 
but never an active partisan. An outspoken 
advocate of the principle of excluding National 
questions from the domain of purely State and 
local politics, he has never failed, whenever he 
has been a candidate for any elective office, to 
receive the warm support of a no inconsider- 
able portion of those whose views upon Nation- 
al questions were antagonistic to his own. On 
the other hand, his sturdy independence and 
fearless opposition to men and measures of his 
own political party, has forever kept him out- 
side and above the schemes and machinations 
of political managers. In 1S7C> he was elected 
to the House of Representatives of Minnesota 
from the Red Wing District. His familiarity 
with the condition and needs of the educa- 
tional interests of the Slate naturally gave him 
a foremost place among the friends of popular 
education in the House. Two important meas- 
ures, prepared and successfully championed by 
him, still remain upon the statute books of the 
State, viz.: the law authorizing towns and 
cities to establish public libraries, and the 





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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



389 



"compulsory education" law, requiring par- 
ents to send their children to school for a min- 
imum term at least. The wisdom and efficiency 
of these measures have been demonstrated by 
long experience, and, although amended in un- 
important details, the existing laws in sub- 
stance remain as they were prepared by their 
author. In 1878 Mr. Wilson was elected State 
Senator from the Red Wing District, and 
served in that capacity in the Twenty-first and 
Twenty-second Legislatures — including the 
extra session of 1881. At the close of the first 
session he was unanimously elected president 
pro tern, of the Senate, and served in that ca- 
pacity during the remainder of his official 
term. The extra session of 1881 is memorable 
in the history of Minnesota as being the session 
at which the measures adjusting the repu- 
diated State railway bonds were successfully 
carried through. It is needless to add that 
these measures found in Senator Wilson an 
earnest and able advocate, and their success 
was due much to his tactical skill as a parlia- 
mentarian, and to the strength of his personal 
influence. It was at the close of this extra 
session that articles of impeachment against 
Hon. E. St. Julien Cox, Judge of the Ninth 
Judicial District, were presented to the Sen- 
ate. The impeachment trial was held during 
the winter of 1882, and, owing to the absence 
of Lieutenant-Governor Oilman. Senator Wil- 
son presided, almost continuously, over the 
sessions of the Senate. The trial lasted fifty- 
live days, and involved many intricate ques- 
tions of law and evidence, which tested the 
skill and knowledge of the presiding officer. 
Senator Wilson, however, was equal to the 
occasion, and discharged the arduous duties of 
his position with an ability and impartiality 
which evoked much commendation at the time. 
The extra session of 1881 and the impeachment 
trial were held in the Market House in St. 
Paul, the capitol building having been de- 
stroyed by fire while the Legislature was in 
session in November, 1881. Senator Wilson 
and other Senators barely escaped from the 
binning building. Mr. Wilson has been twice 
married. His first wife and the mother of his 
children was .Miss Mary J. ('handler, to whom 



he was married in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, in 
1844. She died at Red Wing in 1887, and in 
1892 he was married to Miss Flora J. Sargent, 
of Chicago. Four of his seven children are 
living, and are all worthy of their honorable 
parentage. The eldest, Frank M.. a prominent 
lawyer of Red Wing, has been a member of the 
State Legislature of Minnesota, and is well 
known in the politics of the day. Miss Mat lie 
F. is a teacher of the highest reputation in the 
public schools of Minneapolis; Alice L. is the 
wife of Hiram Howe, county treasurer of 
Goodhue county, Minnesota; and Oliver O. oc- 
cupies the responsible position of receiving 
teller of one of the largest banks in the West, 
the Security Bank of Minneapolis. Mr. Wilson 
is now living a life of well-earned ease and re- 
tirement, among his books and his friends, 
in the city of Red Wing. 



NATHAN MVRICK. 



Among the very earliest and most prominent 
settlers of Minnesota and the Northwest, who 
are yet living, is Nathan Myrick, of St. Paul. 
He came to the Northwest nearly sixty years 
ago, and he has been a resident of St. Paul 
since 1S48. His tall, stalwart, and commanding 
form, unbent and apparently unimpaired by 
half a century of activity and energy, is a fa- 
miliar figure, and it is commonly said that of 
all the early pioneers he is by far the best pre- 
served and has the widest acquaintance. Na- 
than Myrick was bom at Westport, Essex 
county. New York, July 7, 1822. His father, 
Barnabas Myrick, was a leading citizen of his 
community, engaged in various lines of busi- 
ness and somewhat prominent in public affairs, 
being at one time a member of the New York 
Legislature, and at another State loan commis- 
sioner, etc. His paternal grandfather was 
Barzilla Myrick, who was born in Massachu- 
setts, and was a Revolutionary soldier. The 
maiden name of his mother was Lavina Bige- 
low. He was reared in his native village to 
the age of eighteen, and was educated in the 
district schools and at an academy. In young 



39° 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



manhood he was set to work in his father's 
store and tannery. The work in the tannery 
was very distasteful to him, hut there seemed 
no prospect of release from it until he should 
become of age and be his own master. In the 
winter of 1S41, before he was nineteen, he quit 
his father's service and prepared to come to 
the Northwest, then an almost unknown and 
practically an unexplored region. His school- 
mate, the late Maj. E. A. C. Hatch, who 
became a well-known Minnesota citizen and 
soldier, intended accompanying him, but was 
detained at the moment of young Myrick's 
setting out. About the 1st of May, 1841, he 
left his New York home, and on the 5th of June 
arrived at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Prairie 
du Chien was then little more than a remote 
frontier military post, and Wisconsin was a 
newly organized Territory. The ensuing sum- 
mer and early fall were spent by the young 
adventurer under various forms and conditions 
of hard luck. His little capital became 
exhausted, he could obtain no employment, 
and he had a spell of severe illness. At last, 
late in the fall, in association with a Mr. Eben 
Weld, he obtained a small stock of goods 
suited to the Indian trade of the country, and 
by means of a keel boat loaned him by General 
Brooke, the commander of the post of Fort 
Crawford, at Prairie du Chien, conveyed them 
up the Mississippi to an island opposite the 
broad, flat prairie then called "Prairie La 
Crosse." The name was originally given to 
the prairie by the French from the circum- 
stance that the Indians were wont to assemble 
there and indulge in the hall game of la crosse. 
Young Myrick arrived at the island November 
It, and as soon as possible built a double-log 
cabin for his "store." When he was ready for 
business the amount of cash in his treasury 
was a single dollar. But he was quite success 
ful from the first. The Indians of the country 
(Winnebagoes) patronized him liberally, pay- 
ing cash for all they bought, and he well nigh 
closed out his stock in a month. He had nu- 
merous adventures, some of them thrilling and 
perilous. On one occasion he and his partner, 
Mr. Weld, were attacked by some Indians in 
their store, and the red rascals tired through 



the windows and well nigh riddled the door 
with bullets. At another time an Indian had 
stealthily drawn his knife and suddenly raised 
his arm to stab Mr. Myrick, but the young 
trader caught the savage by the wrist just in 
time to prevent the deadly thrust. In time, 
however, Mr. Myrick became very popular with 
the Indians. He was tall, stalwart, and brave, 
and these were qualities the Winnebagoes ad- 
mired, lie dealt honestly with them, and this 
they liked. He was a fine rifle shot, and when 
he beat the fastest runner of their tribe in a 
celebrated foot race, in the summer of 1842. he 
was fully established in their general esteem. 
The thriving city of La Crosse, Wisconsin, 
stands — and will ever stand — as a monument 
to the genius, sagacity, and enterprise of Na- 
than Myrick. For he was its founder, its 
designer, its original proprietor. In the spring 
of 1842 he abandoned his cabin trading house 
on the island and built and occupied another, 
on the main land, on the Wisconsin side of the 
liver, where the city now stands. In the pre- 
vious March the partnership between him and 
Mr. Weld had been concluded, and Mr. Weld 
left that section and went up to Fort Snelling. 
It was during this season, the spring of 1842, 
when Mr. Myrick laid out the town of La 
Crosse. The project was his own. He thought 
there should be a town there and he founded it. 
The site was his "claim," which he had regu- 
larly pre-empted and on which he had built 
the first cabin, anil was the first white settler. 
Nathan Myrick and Auguste Chouteau are the 
two youngest city founders in American his- 
tory, although Myrick has the greater distinc- 
tion. Chouteau laid out St. Louis, Missouri, 
when he was only sixteen years of age, 
but he did so under the directions of his 
step-father, Laclede. Myrick laid out and 
established La Crosse at the age of twen- 
ty, and the enterprise was his own concep- 
tion and execution. Ira B. Brunson, who 
subsequently surveyed the original site of St. 
Paul, was employed by Mr. Myrick to survey 
his town of La Crosse. In the summer of 1842 
.Mr. Myrick made a brief visit to Fort Snelling 
and the Falls of St. Anthony, becoming ac- 
quainted with the country by personal obser- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



391 



ration. The following summer (1843) he visited 
his old home in New York State, and on the 
17th of August was married to Miss Rebecca 
E. Ismon. at Charlotte, Vermont. On their re- 
turn to La Crosse, Mrs. Myrick and her com- 
panion — a Miss Pearson, who became the wife 
of Mr. Myrick's partner, H. J. It. Miller — were 
the first white women in the place. The first 
death in La Crosse was that of the first-born 
child of Mr. and Mrs. .Mvrick, in 1845. Mr. Mv- 
rick was the first postmaster, in 1843, and it 
w T as at his suggestion that the word "Prairie" 
was dropped from the name of the town and 
the postoffice, and the town called simply La 
Crosse. In 1840 he was elected one of the 
county commissioners of Crawford county. 
Wisconsin — the county seat being Prairie du 
Chien — and served on the board until he left 
the country. Mr. Myrick continued in the In- 
dian trade and was engaged in lumbering in 
Wisconsin for some years. In the winter of 
1842-43 he disposed of a considerable stock of 
Indian goods at Fort Snelling. In January, 
1844, his friend, E. A. C. Hatch, joined him at 
La Crosse and clerked for him until 1848, when 
Mr. Myrick came to St. Paul. On the whole 
his operations were quite successful. He sus- 
tained some losses, as was to be expected, but 
they were caused by influences which he could 
not control. In June, 1848 — the year before 
the town was incorporated — Mr. Myrick left 
La Crosse and came with his family to St. Paul. 
He has ever since been a resident of this city 
and State, except at intervals, wdien tem- 
porarily called away by business demands. He 
first came to Minnesota under a business en- 
gagement with the late Hon. Henry M. Rice, 
and for many years was largely engaged in the 
Indian trade in this Territory and State, and 
also in what is now North Dakota. He had 
trading houses and stores at Sauk Rapids. 
Sauk Center, Itasca, Traverse des Sioux. St. 
Peter, Winnebago Agency, Yellow Medicine, 
Redwood, Big Stone Lake, Fort Ransom, Fort 
Seward (now Jamestown, North Dakota), Big 
Bend, and Pembina (North Dakota), and at 
other points. In the great Sioux outbreak of 
1802 all his stores then in operation were de- 
stroyed by the Indians, and his brother, An- 



drew J. Myrick, who was in charge of the store 
at the Redwood Agency, was one of the first 
victims of the massacre on the morning of 
August 18. On that day Mr. Myrick himself 
was above SI. Peter, on his way to the agency, 
and came near falling a victim to the sudden 
and terrible outbreak. He saw I lie mangled 
bodies of some of the murdered settlers, and 
warned some of the living and unsuspecting to 
flee for their lives. One man did not heed the 
warning and perished under the gun and toma- 
hawk. As soon as possible Mr. Myrick went 
to the Redwood Agency, recovered the body 
of his brother and buried that of Hon. J. W. 
Lynde. Mr. Myrick's total loss by the outbreak 
was fa illy estimated at flOO.OOO. A consider- 
able portion of this sum was subsequently paid 
him by the Government out of the confiscated 
annuities of the Indians, but thereafter he 
abandoned the Indian trade in Minnesota. His 
operations in Dakota were, however, continued 
until 1876, when he retired from the business. 
He had been engaged in mining enterprises 
in various parts of the country and largely in 
real estate transactions. He still owns val- 
uable realty in St. Paul, La Crosse, at San 
Diego, California, and elsewhere. Altogether 
he has been fairly successful and is comfort- 
ably situated in the evening of his long, active, 
and busy life. His present residence, at the 
foot of Wilkin street, St. Paul, stands imme- 
diately on the bluff of the Mississippi, 
and overlooks the great river which has been 
the scene of so many of the owner's operations 
and triumphs. In 1843, as has been stated, Mr. 
Myrick married Rebecca E. Ismon, a native 
of New York. Mrs. Myrick, who has always 
faithfully borne her part in the life work of 
her husband since she joined him, and has been 
his efficient helpmeet in every respect, is si ill 
with him. Her life and that of her husband 
has, at times, been one of hardship and 
privation in certain respects, but it has always 
been of rare congeniality and domestic felicity. 
Their golden wedding, in St. Paul, in 1893, was 
a local event which will long be remembered. 
They have now three children, who have at- 
tained to maturity and honorable stations in 
life, viz. : Matilda M., the wife of J. W. Shep- 



39^ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



ard, of St. Paul; Fanny Watson, the wife of 
Champion Brown, of Minneapolis, and William 
Myrick, Esq., of St. Paul. 



CHARLES W. BUNN. 

Charles W. Bunn, of St. Paul, was born in 
Trempeleau county. Wisconsin, May 21, 1855. 
He is the son of Romanzo and Sarah (Purdy) 
Bunn, natives of Now York, and residents of 
Wisconsin since L854. His father lias been for 
over thirty years one of the most prominent 
jurists of the Northwest, and for twenty-two 
years he has served as United States District 
Judge for the Western District of Wisconsin, 
which position he still occupies. Charles W. 
passed his early boyhood in Sparta, Monroe 
county. Wisconsin, where he attended the pub- 
lic schools until he was prepared to enter the 
University of Wisconsin, in 1870. He completed 
the full college course, and received his degree 
from that institution in 1874. and immediately 
afterwards commenced the study of the law 
in the office of J. H. Carpenter at .Madison, 
Wisconsin. He afterwards entered the Law 
Department of the University of Wisconsin, 
and received the degree of LL. B. from that 
institution in 1875. He immediately after- 
wards entered the office of Cameron & Losey, 
of La Crosse, Wisconsin, as a clerk, and in Jan- 
uary, 1876, became a partner in that firm un- 
der the firm name of Cameron, Losey & Bunn. 
His connection with tliis firm, one of the most 
prominent in the State of Wisconsin, continued 
until 1885, when he removed to St. Paul, and 
there continued the practice of the law as a 
member of the firm of Lusk & Bunn, his asso- 
ciate being Mr. James W. Lusk. The business 
of this firm soon assumed large proportions, 
and in 1890, Mr. Emerson Hadley was admitted, 
the firm name becoming Lusk, Bunn & Hadley. 
In 1892 Mr. Lusk retired from the firm, which 
continued business under the name of Bunn & 
Hadley until 1895, when Mr. Bunn gave up 
general practice and became counsel for the 
reorganization managers and receivers of the 
Northern Pacific Railroad Company; and upon 
(he completion of the reorganization, became 



the general counsel for the new organization, 
the Northern Pacific Railway Company, which 
position he now holds. The firms of Lusk. Bunn 
& Hadley and Bunn & Hadley. in addition to 
a large general practice, were I he general conn 
sel — the former firm of the Minnesota & North- 
western, and the Chicago. St. Paul & Kansas 
City Railway companies, now the Chicago- 
tireat Western Railway Company — and the 
latter of the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad Com 
pany. This concentrated a large and varied 
practice, embracing a large number of impor- 
tant litigated cases, many of Them involving 
corporate rights, powers and duties which 
often look Mr. Bunn into the highest State and 
Federal courts, where he is always listened to 
with attention and respect. Mr. Bunn possesses 
in a high degree those qualifications, qualities 
and powers, physical, mental and moral, which 
lead to professional eminence, lie has a sound 
and powerful physique — not one of the least 
essentials of growth in power — that high de- 
gree of honesty, fidelity and integrity of char- 
acter, without which no man can become emi- 
nent in the profession; and constantly increas- 
ing mental scope and strength, enriched by 
much experience for so young a man. He has 
that acuteness of mental vision and readiness 
of diction which enables him to state a case 
clearly, the analytic or discriminating faculty 
which enables him to separate the vital 
questions upon which the case turns, from the 
debris which gets more or less into every law- 
suit, and the strongly developed logical or 
reasoning faculty, which enables him to bring 
to bear tersely and forcibly the considerations 
which hear upon the solution of those ques- 
tions. The same qualities and powers make 
him a wise counselor and useful and efficient 
in office work and the preparation of the impor- 
tant papers and documents which are constant- 
ly required by large railroad corporations in 
connection with its financing, securities, leases 
and trackage, traffic and other contracts. One 
of the leading lawyers and jurists of this State, 
who is thoroughly conversant with (he bench 
and bar of the Northwest, says of Mr. Bunn: 

"I have known him ever since he entered upon 
the practice. It is no exaggeration to say that 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



393 



he is generally, and I think uniformly, 
among the people professionally, recognized 
as one of the ablest attorneys in this Slate and 
in the Northwest, and his personal character 
is above discussion or question. He is a man 
of unquestioned ability, and I believe if the 
question was asked to-day of the members of 
the bar in the State of Minnesota, who is the 
most promising young lawyer in this State, a 
large majority would say, Charles W. Bunn." 

These statements are careful and consider 
ate, like their author. Mr. Bunn is a young 
man, not yet arrived at the maturity of his 
powers, and it is quite safe to say that among 
the younger members of the bar there is no 
one more likely to be the leader of the future 
bar of Minnesota than he. In 1877, Mr. Bunn 
married Mary Anderson, daughter of Mons 
Anderson, a prominent citizen of La Crosse, 
Wisconsin. They are the parents of four chil- 
dren, Helen, Samuel A., Donald C. and Charles. 



CHARLES S. CRANDALL. 

No doubt there are other citizens of Owa- 
tonna who figure as conspicuously in (lie pub- 
lic affairs of their community as does the 
subject of this sketch; but none are more 
vitally connected with its development from 
the crudeness of a frontier town to its present 
flourishing maturity than this pioneer settler. 
Charles Scheretz Crandall was born in Erie 
county, Ohio, January 18, ISM), the son of Dr. 
Charles Chapin and Caroline i Scheretz) Cran- 
dall. His father, who was a physician, was a 
native of New York State, as were the more 
immediate antecedents of Dr. Crandall, though 
earlier ones hailed hither from England. The 
Scheretz family was, as the name indicates, of 
German origin, but the father of Caroline, John 
Scheretz, fought as an American citizen in the 
War of 1812. To the age of seventeen years, 
Charles S. Crandall lived in the Buckeye State, 
absorbing such knowledge and general culture 
as its common schools afforded. Then, in lsr>7, 
yielding to the desire prevalent among young 
men of his time to seek larger opportunities in 
the newer West, he came to Steele county, Min- 
nesota, where, with his mother and two broth- 



ers, he engaged in farming. Afterwards lie went 
to Faribault, and was engaged in the printing 
business at that place for two years. Remov- 
ing to Owatonna, he was given the position 
of deputy county auditor and register of deeds, 
and later attained to the higher dignity of 
register of deeds. For the first sixteen months 
he held the office by virtue of appointment, 
and for two subsequent terms by election. Mr. 
Crandall is a Republican in politics, but not of 
the partisan type. His interest in political 
matters is identical with his solicitude for the 
common weal; and in the various public offices 
to which he has been called he has acquitted 
himself with much credit to both his executive 
ability and his moral purpose. Mr. Crandall 
has served as postmaster of Owatonna for 
eight years; has also filled the office of city 
recorder and done duty on the school board. 
He has served during three terms in the State 
Legislature — in the House in 1874, and in the 
Senate some years subsequently, being re- 
elected for a second term in the Upper House. 
For a period of eight years Mr. Crandall was 
editor of the Owatonna Journal, and as such, 
powerfully stimulated public enterprise, both 
in his city and other sections of the State. 
Some of the leading institutions of southern 
Minnesota are, to a great extent, outgrowths 
of his journalistic and official work. He was a 
member of the board that located and built 
the inebriate asylum — now the State Hospital 
for the Insane — at Rochester, and he served 
for eight years on the board of managers of 
the Reformatory at St. Cloud. He was also 
among the strongest promoters of the State 
Public School at Owatonna, which is devoted 
te the care and education of dependent chil- 
dren, and was for ten years president of the 
board of managers of the latter institution. To 
revert now from his public achievements to his 
more personal career as a business man, we 
find that Mi'. Crandall has for eighteen years 
been identified with the hardware trade of 
Owatonna as head of the firm of Crandall & 
Nelson. Recently, however, he lias sold out 
his interest in the business to Mr. Nelson, and 
new devotes most of his time to the cultivation 
of his farming land. Mr. Crandall has been 



394 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



twice married: first, in February, 1804, to Mary 
Elizabeth Allen, of Owatonna, who died in 
1892; and the second time 1<> Mrs. Irene A. 
Luers, of Owatonna. Mr. Crandall has two 
daughters, born of the former marriage, viz. : 
Mary E., now .Mrs. Atwood, of St. Cloud, and 
( reorgia Caroline. 



ASA G. BRIGGS. 



Among the younger of Minnesota's enter- 
prising business and professional men, few 
have by their own unaided efforts won so clear 
a title to a permanent record of their achieve- 
ments as lias Asa Gilbert Briggs, of the law 
firm of Briggs & Morrison, of St. Paul. Mr. 
Briggs is of remote Welsh extraction, early 
ancestors having crossed from Wales to Mas- 
sachusetts, where they settled, and from 
whence branches of the family took root in 
other New England States and in New York. 
The father of Asa G., Dr. Isaac A. Briggs, is a 
native of Vermont, but came, when a young 
man, to Michigan, where he was married to 
Miss Elizabeth Briggs (also born in Vermont, 
at Northfield). In 1858 I hey removed to Wis- 
consin. After thirty years of active practice 
of medicine he retired, in 1881, and three years 
later removed to St. Paul, where he lias since 
resided. Both he and his wife are "hale and 
hearty," the Doctor at the age of eighty-three 
and Mrs. Briggs at that of eighty-one. Asa G. 
Briggs was born December 20, 1802, at Ar- 
cadia. Trempeleau county. Wisconsin. Here he 
was reared, and here acquired the basis of his 
education, beginning with the district schools, 
then continuing his studies in the graded 
school of Arcadia, from which he graduated 
with the high school class of 1879. During the 
nexi two years he employed himself variously, 
to the end of procuring the means to complete 
his education. He taught a district school, 
took contracts for the moving of buildings, 
even turned his hand to the arduous labor of 
farming. In the fall of 1881 he was able to 
enter college, and matriculated ai the Univer- 
sity of Wisconsin, at Madison. He took the 
general science course, with additional studies 



in modern classics, graduating in the class of 
1885. At college young Briggs was not only 
an ambitious student, but entered with enthu- 
siasm into the social and literary functions of 
the university, becoming a prominent member 
of its various organizations. He belonged 
to the Hesperia literary society, and during 
his sophomore year was elected to the joint de- 
bate team of that organization, which was then 
considered the greatesl honor that the stu- 
dents could confer upon a class-mate. He was 
also a member of the Phi Delta Theta frater- 
nity, and of other debating and athletic socie- 
ties. For a year and a half he was managing 
editor of the University Press, was business 
manager of the first college annual ever pub 
lished there, and he was elected by the faculty 
as one of the orators of the graduating class. 
Numerous and effective as were his activities 
in connection with the university, however, he 
found some time to turn to immediate practical 
account. He was for one session employed in 
the engrossing clerk's department of the State 
Legislature, also for another session in the 
transcribing department. Immediately after 
his graduation he began reading law in St. 
Paul, where his parents were now settled, and 
his brother — Dr. Warren S. Briggs — located in 
medical practice. In 1880 he returned to Madi- 
son, Wisconsin, and entered the law depart- 
ment of the university, and, by doing two years' 
work in one year, graduated with the class of 
1S87. He then returned to St. Paul without 
means, but well equipped with both natural 
and acquired abilities to assure success. For 
four months he filled a position in the abstract 
department of the St. Paul Title Insurance 
Company, and, with the small capital thus 
earned, established himself in a modest way 
in his profession. His office was mere desk 
room in the Chamber of Commerce building, 
and his law library consisted of the Minne- 
sota Reports and Statutes and a few college 
text books. Within two years, however, he 
had secured a very lucrative practice. So 
prompt and abundant a patronage was, of 
course, gratifying, but brought upon him too 
great a strain of work. In 1890 his health gave 
way. and he was compelled to relax for a little. 




CCd^ "&, /^^po 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



395 



He was for a short time associated with Hon. 
George L. Bumi, Judge of the District Court, 
in the firm of Briggs & Bunn. By the spring 
<ii' 1891, Mr. Briggs was able to resume his 
court practice, and has since been closely de- 
voted to his professional work, attaining to a 
position which is almost phenomenal for a man 
of his years. In January, 1894, the Arm of 
Briggs & Countr.yman was formed, M. L. Coun- 
tryman being junior partner. This partner- 
ship was, for reasons of expediency, dissolved 
in 1896, Mr. Briggs and Mr. Countryman con- 
tinuing to share the same offices. Alter about 
two years of individual practice, Mr. Briggs 
associated himself, in July, 1898, with J. L. 1). 
Morrison, in the present firm of Briggs & Mor- 
rison. Mr. Briggs has always cast his vote 
with the Republicans, and during 1896 and 
1897, lie served as president of llie Young .Men's 
Republican Club of Ramsey county; but he 
has never been a candidate for any political 
office. Legal work, in which he has had such 
signal success, is his delight. .Mr. Briggs is a 
member of the Minnesota. Club, the Commer- 
cial Club, Masonic Fraternity, and the Royal 
Arcanum. He has a large circle of friends, 
who speak with unstinted admiration of his 
abilities and achievements. The following is 
given as the consensus of opinion of several 
prominent attorneys who are personally ac- 
quainted with the subject of this sketch: 

".Mr. Briggs has been in active practice as a 
lawyer in all the courts of the Slate of Minne- 
sota for about a dozen years, and is one of the 
most careful and painstaking attorneys that 
we have at the St. Paul bar. He has acquired 
a large and varied practice, and represents 
many important interests. He is in no sense 
an office lawyer. He has always had an active 
court practice, and has been successful in a re- 
markably large number of contested cases. As 
a trial lawyer he is vigorous and able; but 
where he particularly excels is as counselor, 
and in the preparation of his cases. Person- 
ally, Mr. Briggs is a gentleman of excellent 
habits. He is quiet, dignified, courteous, popu- 
lar, and is recognized as a loyal friend. He 
has the respect of the community and is bound 
to make his mark in his chosen profession." 

In 1891 Mr. Briggs was married to Miss 
Jessica E. Pierce, daughter of Squier L. Pierce, 



a prominent attorney of St. Paul. Of this union 
have been born two sons and a daughter — 
Allan, born August 7, 1892; Paul Austin, born 
October 13, 1894, and Mary Elizabeth, born 
December 5, 1899. 



ARCHIBALD W. McKINSTRY. 

Archibald Winthrop McKinstry, of Fari- 
bault, was born in Chicopee, Hampden county, 
Massachusetts, in March, 1828, the son of Per- 
seus and Grace (Williams) McKinstry. His 
ancestors on the paternal side were Scotch- 
Irish, and on the maternal side he is of English 
descent. His grandfather, Rev. John McKin- 
stry, was pastor of the First Congregational 
church in Springfield (now Chicopee), .Massa- 
chusetts. His father, Perseus McKinstry, was 
a tanner and shoemaker. Archibald received 
the rudiments of his education in the common 
schools, which he attended in the winter, work- 
ing on the farm during the summer, until six- 
teen years of age. He subsequently attended 
Fredonia Academy. In 1844 he secured a posi- 
tion as apprentice to the printing business, 
in the office of his brother, who published the 
Fredonia Censor, at Fredonia, Chautauqua 
county, New York. After serving an appren- 
ticeship of four years, he worked for a time as 
journeyman in eastern cities, and then formed 
a co-partnership with his brother in the publi- 
cation of the <'ensor. In 1st;.") he disposed of 
his interests in the paper, removed to Fari- 
bault, Minnesota, and purchased the Faribault 
Republican — then known as the Central Re- 
publican — of O. Brown, Esq. The first number 
after the purchase was issued on December 27, 
1866, and from that time to the present Mr. 
McKinstry has continued the publication of 
I he paper. In 1877 he served one term in the 
Minnesota House of Representatives. He has 
been a director in the First National Bank 
of Faribault since ils organization, and was 
the second president of the Minnesota State 
Horticultural Association. He was also, for 
fifteen years, secretary and treasurer of the 
Faribault Gas Light Company. Mr. McKin- 
stry is one of the leading and public spirited 



396 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



men of Faribault. Any subject that arises 
involving action in the interest of the commu- 
nity is sure to be presented to him for advice, 
and great reliance is always placed upon his 
judgment. He is a man who commands and 
retains the confidence and respect of his fellow 
citizens to a marked degree. Mr. McKinstry 
was married, September ::, 1857, to Ellen E. 
Putnam, daughter of Nathan B. Putnam, of 
Fredonia, New York. Mr. and Mrs. McKinstry 
have two children. The daughter, Grace E., 
is an accomplished artist, who has traveled 
and studied abroad, and has produced many 
works of art, in figure and portrait painting, 
that have made her name famous. The son, 
Linn H., is at the head of the Minneapolis En- 
graving Company of Minneapolis. Mr. McKin- 
stry, with his family, attends the Congrega- 
tional church. 



GEORGE W. BATCHELDER. 

Hon. George Washington Batchelder, pio- 
neer and prominent lawyer of Faribault, was 
born at Danville, Caledonia county. Vermont, 
February 18, 1826. He is of Puritan extrac- 
tion, the sou of John and Alice (Kittridge) 
Batchelder, both parents being natives of New 
England of Colonial ancestry. His grand- 
father, Jethro Batchelder, was a Revolutionary 
soldier who resided at Portsmouth, New 
Hampshire, in early life, and settled in Dan- 
ville, Vermont, in 1797. He was one of the 
pioneers in that town, where he died at the 
age of ninety-three years. His wife, who was 
Dorothy Mighals, died two years later, at the 
same age. This branch of the Batchelder 
family descended from Rev. Stephen Batchel- 
der, who settled in New Hampshire in early 
Colonial times. Among his descendants were 
many illustrious men, as is evidenced by the 
following quotation from the Springfield (Mas 
sachusetts) Republican of February 1, 1870: 

"The Rev. Stephen Batchelder came with 
his family from Surrey, England, and settled 
in Hampton, New Hampshire, as early as 1C38, 
and was the founder and first minister of that 
town. The elder Whittiers, Husseys and 



Batchelders may be compared with the small 
Scotch lords, not rich in money, but in lands 
and the respect of their neighbors. They were 
the founders of towns and the ancestors of 
thousands of people now living. * * * 
Daniel Webster, John G. Whittier and Col. V. 
B. Green (of Boston) were related by Batch- 
elder blood. Susannah Hatchelder was the 
grandmother of Daniel Webster, from whom he 
inherited his dark Batchelder complexion. One 
of the daughters of Rev. Stephen Batchelder 
married a man named Sanborn, and is the an- 
cestor of all of that name in this country." 

John Batchelder, the father of our subject, 
died in Danville, Vermont, in 1845, and Mrs. 
Batchelder died May 11, 1879, at the age 
of ninety-five years. George W. Batch- 
elder, in early life, attended the common 
schools near his home, and prepared for college 
at Phillips' Academy at Danville. He entered 
the University of Vermont in 1847 and grad- 
uated in 1851, receiving the degree of A. B. 
and afterwards that of A. M. During his col- 
lege course he taught school vacations to de- 
fray his expenses, and upon graduation 
took charge of the graded schools at 
Windsor, Vermont. After one year at Wind- 
sor he went south, and taught for one 
year in the Academy at Tazewell, East Ten- 
nessee, and for another year he taught the 
McMinn Academy at Rogersville, East Ten- 
nessee. During all this time Mr. Batchelder 
was reading law, and in 1854 was admitted to 
the bar of Hawkins county. Tennessee, and 
soon after returned to Vermont. The follow- 
ing year he came west and located first at 
Janesville, Wisconsin, where he practiced law 
for about one year. He then removed to the 
Territory of Minnesota, and in May, 1855, set- 
tled at Faribault. Since then he has been in the 
(■(instant practice of his profession. His first 
law partner was the Hon. John M. Berry, late 
Justice of the Supreme Court of Minnesota. 
In the autumn of 1857, when Mr. Berry took 
his seat on the bench, the partnership was 
dissolved, and Mr. Batchelder became a part- 
ner of Hon. Thomas S. Buckham, now Judge 
of the Fifth Judicial District of Minnesota, 
which partnership continued until 18S0. He 
now has associated with him in the practice his 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



397 



son, Charles S., under (he firm name of Batch- 
elder & Batchelder. Mr. Batchelder has been 
frequently honored by his fellow citizens with 
nomination and election to public office. He 
was the Democratic candidate for Congress in 
186S for the Southern District of the Stale. 
but was defeated with his party. In 1871 and 
in 1872 he served as State Senator; was mayor 
of the city of Faribault in 1880 and 1881, and 
in 1888 was the nominee of liis party for Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Batchelder 
was for fifteen years chairman of the city 
board of education, and has been for upwards 
of fifteen years president of the Rice County 
Bar Association, and has always taken a 
prominent and active part in public affairs. 
He has been a director of the First National 
Bank of Faribault for seventeen years, and 
was for many years a director of the Austin 
National Bank. He is a Royal Arch Mason, 
and when in college was a member of the 
Sigma Phi society, and afterwards became 
a member of the Phi Beta Kappa society of 
the University of Vermont, and with his fam- 
ily attends the Congregational church. Mr. 
Batchelder was married, July 12, 1858, to Miss 
Kate E. Davis, daughter of Cornelius Davis, 
of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. They have three 
children: a daughter, Georgia L., and two 
sons: Charles S., in business with his father, 
and John D., who was admitted to the bar, but 
who is now pursuing a post-graduate course at 
the Johns Hopkins University. 



NATHAN C. KINGSLEY. 

Hon. Nathan Curtis Kingsley, of Austin. 
Minnesota, was born September 10, 1850, a I 
Sharon, New Milford county, Connecticut. The 
Kingsleys are an old New England family, 
traceable back to John Kingsley, who, as early 
as the year 1036, settled in Dorchester, Mas- 
sachusetts — now one of the beautiful southern 
suburbs of Boston — and was one of the found- 
ers of the first Congregational church of that 
old town. The more remote ancestry is Eng- 
lish. The branch of this family tree with which 
our sketch is most directly concerned took 



root in Scotland township, Connecticut, early 
in the Eighteenth Century, from whence the 
great-great-grandfather of our subject mi- 
grated to Pennsylvania and became one of 
those pioneer settlers in Bradford county who, 
in 1778, were severely harassed by the Indians 
near the location of the present Wilkesbarre. 
This ancestor built a house on the frontier 
which is the oldest struct are now standing 
within the above-named county. In the course 
of time the family returned to Connecticut, 
from which State Alonzo and Marilla (Pierson) 
Kingsley — parents of the subject of this sketch 
— removed, in the year 1857, to LaSalle, Illi- 
nois, Nathan C. being seven years of age at 
the time of their migration. The elder Kings- 
ley followed the double vocation of farming 
and carpentry; but on the outbreak of the 
Civil War he laid down his tools and enlisted 
in the Fifteenth Illinois Cavalry, from which 
he was transferred to the Tenth Cavalry, his 
service with the two regiments extending 
throughout the war. The son received a com- 
mon school education and was ambitious for 
higher study; but the circumstances of the 
family were such that he was obliged to be- 
come self-supporting at a very early age. At 
thirteen he began working as a farm hand, 
and continued as such until he was eighteen, 
at which age he came to Minnesota. In this 
State he found employment of the same kind, 
which he followed for a year, hiring out by 
the day or month, as his services were required. 
He then, in 1870, engaged to learn the miller's 
I rade in a custom mill at Orion, in Olmsted 
county, and this latter business he followed 
until 1877. In the meantime, in 1875, he had 
begun the study of law. and in the autumn of 
1876 he was admitted to the bar in Fillmore 
county, having previously moved to Rushford, 
in that county. In February, 1877, he became 
associated with C. N. Enos in the firm of Enos 
& Kingsley. This partnership was, however, 
dissolved in 1878, in which year Mr. Kingsley 
removed to Chatfield, Minnesota, to form a new 
firm with Rollin A. Case, in connection with 
whom he continued to practice until 1881. 
After the dissolution of the latter partnership 
Mr. Kingsley practiced by himself for two 



39§ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



years, then became associated with Russell 
E. Shepherd. In the spring of 1887, Mr. Kings- 
ley and Mr. Shepherd moved, with their fami- 
lies, to Austin, where they resumed practice, 
continuing as partners until Mr. Kingsley s ap- 
pointment, on November 26, 1898, to the 
District Bench. Judge Kingsley's political 
sympathies arc on the Republican side, and 
during his professional career he has rendered 
efficient service in various public capacities. 
He was president of the school board of Chat- 
field throughout his residence in that town, 
and during the two years prior to his appoint- 
ment as District Judge he served on the board 
of railroad and warehouse commissioners. In 
18S0 he was made county attorney for Fillmore 
county, which office he filled for four years. 
Judge Kingsley is a Mason, also a Knight of 
Pythias, an Elk and a member of the Ancient 
Order of United Workmen. In the Masonic 
order he has been Grand High Priest of the 
State, and at present holds an office in the 
general Grand Chapter of the United States. 
In the year 1873 Mr. Kingsley was married to 
Miss Clara Smith, a native of New York State. 
Cora Marilla Kingsley is their only child. 
The Judge, together with his family, is a reg- 
ular attendant at the Episcopal church. Judge 
Kingsley began life low enough in the business 
scale, and the success he now enjoys he has 
earned by faithful and persevering endeavor. 
Both at the bar and on the bench he has won 
the general esteem, and is counted among the 
leaders in the legal profession of the State of 
Minnesota. 



HUDSON WILSON. 



Hon. Hudson Wilson, banker of Faribault, 
Minnesota, was born in the town of Concord, 
Lake county, Ohio, November 10, 1830, the son 
of Orrin and Harriet (Winchell) Wilson. Both 
his parents were from old Connecticut fami- 
lies, who migrated to Ohio in the early settle- 
ment of that State. Orrin Wilson was a farmer, 
and his son Hudson spent his early life as a 
farmer's boy. At the age of sixteen he en- 
tered the Kirtland Academy, and after com- 
pleting his education he went to Painesville, 



the county seat, and engaged in mercantile 
business. In 1855 he removed to Madison, Wis- 
consin, where for two years he engaged in the 
hardware trade. Early in February, 1857, he 
came to Minnesota and settled in Faribault. 
Here, in company with a cousin, Hiram Wil- 
son, lie opened a private bank, the firm name 
being H. Wilson & Company, which continued 
for seven years without change. In 1804, 
Hiram Wilson withdrew, and Zenus S. Wilson, 
a younger brother of our subject, took his 
place, and the business continued under the 
same name for another seven years. In 1871, 
the Citizen's National Bank of Faribault was 
incorporated, with Hudson Wilson president 
and Z. S. Wilson cashier, Mr. Hudson Wilson 
still retaining the presidency. For forty-three 
years Mr. Wilson has been continuously en- 
gaged in banking in Faribault, and has the 
distinction of being longer in the business than 
any other banker in the State, and his bank 
has always been regarded as one of the most 
solid financial institutions of the State. Mr. 
Wilson was for thirty-three years a trustee 
and the treasurer of the State School for De- 
fectives, and was chairman of the board of 
county commissioners for nine years. In poli- 
tics he is a strong Republican, but is not a 
politician. He was elected a member of the 
House of Representatives in 1888 and served 
one term, but he never sought public office. 
He is a man who commands the respect and 
confidence of the community, a thoroughly re- 
liable and trustworthy citizen. He is a member 
of the Congregational church and a trustee of 
that society. Mr. Wilson was married, Janu- 
ary 10, 1855, to Miss Sarah B. Pease, of Fains- 
ville, Ohio. To them were born three daugh- 
ters: Lizzie L. (Mrs. I. A. Barnes, of Minne- 
apolis), Hattie (Mrs. W. E. Blodget, of Fari- 
bault), and Carrie S., who died in childhood. 



ELIJAH H. BLODGETT. 

Elijah Haskell Blodgett, of Red Wing, like 
most of the pioneers of Minnesota, sprang 
from the sturdy yeomanry of New England. 
He was born February 10, 1832, at Mathers- 
field, Windsor county, Vermont. His father 



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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



399 



was Ashly Blodgett, <a farmer in moderate cir- 
cumstances. His mother's maiden name was 
Orel Haskell, the daughter of John Haskell, 
who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary 
War until taken prisoner by the British forces. 
The subject of this sketch was educated in the 
common schools of Montpelier, Vermont. After 
leaving school he learned the carpenter's trade, 
and soon developed into a patternmaker, which 
occupation he followed for ten years. Mr. 
Blodgett did not serve as a soldier during the 
War of the Rebellion, but rendered effectual 
aid in supplying the "sinews of war," working 
in a gun-shop and factory where all sorts of 
tire-arms were manufactured. lie came to Min- 
nesota in 1866, and located at Red Wing. He 
went into the grain business, and, with T. B. 
Sheldon, huilt the first grain elevator there. 
This business has been continued ever since. 
While Mr. Blodgett has devoted most of his 
time to his large business interests, he has al- 
ways been a public spirited citizen, and has 
had the welfare of the city of Red Wing at 
heart. He has been called upon repeatedly to 
share in the burden of administration, having 
served as president of the school board, and 
has been a member of the water board. He has 
also been a member of the council, and is now 
mayor of the city, having been elected on the 
Republican ticket, of which party he is a stal- 
wart member. Mr. Blodgett is president of 
the Red Wing Sewer Pipe Company, and vice- 
president of the Minnesota Stone Ware Com- 
pany. He is also a member of the Transit 
Company that operates the highway that 
crosses the Mississippi at Red Wing, and con- 
sists of the bridges that span the two chan- 
nels, together with the roads between. Mr. 
Blodgett is not a member of any secret organi- 
zation, nor does he claim any church connec- 
tion. He was married, September 17, 1855, to 
Sarah P. Sturtevant, of Hart land, Vermont. 
Thev have no children. 



THOMAS C. CLARK. 



Dr. Thomas Chalmers Clark, of Stillwater, 
traces the arrival of his ancestors in America 
from the landing of the ship, "Mary and John,*' 



from England at Dorchester, Massachusetts, 
in 1630. The first of his paternal family in 
this country, William Clark, was one of the 
company which was led by Rev. Thomas Hook- 
er, and which settled on the Connecticut river. 
The descendants of William Clark lived for 
several generations at North Hampton, Mas- 
sachusetts. On the maternal side the Doctor's 
family line is traced directly to Anne Dudley, 
daughter of Thomas Dudley, one of the early 
Colonial Governors of -Massachusetts. She 
married Silas Bradstreet, another Governor of 
the colony in ils early existence, and her name 
is very prominent and celebrated in Colonial 
history. Dr. Clark's father. Rev. Nelson Clark, 
was born at Brookfield, Vermont, in 1813. For 
thirty-five years he was pastor of Congrega- 
tional churches in Vermont and Massachu- 
setts. He removed to Minnesota in 1S74, and 
died in this State in L880. His wife, Elizabeth 
Oilman Clark, was a granddaughter of Rev. 
Samuel Hidden, who for forty-five years was 
pastor of the Congregational church at Tam- 
worth. New Hampshire. She died at Still- 
water, June 16, L899. Dr. Clark was born at 
Quincy, Massachusetts, April 22, 1853. He 
began his education in the common schools 
and was graduated from Bristol Academy at 
Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1870. In the fall 
of that year he removed to Stillwater, Minne- 
sota, where he engaged in teaching, and was 
thus employed until the spring of 1S77. About 
this time he commenced the study of medicine 
with Dr. W. 11. Piatt, of Stillwater, and he 
served as hospital steward of the State prison, 
from the spring of 1S77, to the fall of 1879. 
He graduated from Rush Medical College, Chi- 
cago, in 1881, with the highest honors, and was 
the valedictorian of a class of one hundred and 
seventy two members. After his graduation 
he located for the practice of his profession in 
Stillwater, where he has remained almost con- 
tinuously up to the present time. His standing 
in his profession is eminent, and he has far 
more than a local reputation. He is a mem- 
ber of the county. State and National medical 
societies, and of the Association of Military 
Surgeons of the United Slates. The Doctor has 
always taken an active interest in military 



400 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



affairs, and has spent much of his life in the 
military service of his adopted Slate and of 
his country. As early as 1883, at the time 
of its organization, he enlisted as a private in 
Company K, First Regiment Minnesota Na- 
tional Guard. He was promoted to first lieu- 
tenant and assistant surgeon in ISSii. was made 
captain and assistant surgeon in 1894, and be- 
came major and surgeon in 1895. He was an 
efficient surgeon, and a good practical soldier, 
too, and he could handle a rifle as well as he 
could wield a scalpel. He was a member of 
the First Regiment ritle team, and also of 
the State rifle team from 1S85 to 1890. He 
qualified as a sharpshooter at every encamp- 
ment of the National Guard held from 1884 to 
1897, and was decorated as a distinguished 
rifleman in 1890. Soon after the breaking out 
of the late war with Spain, Dr. Clark entered 
the United States military service. He was 
mustered in. May 4. 1898, as first assistant sur- 
geon of the Thirteenth .Minnesota Volunteers, 
but two days later was promoted to surgeon 
of the Twelfth Minnesota. .May 29, following, 
he was detailed as acting chief surgeon of the 
Third Division of the First Army Corps at 
Camp Thomas, Chickamauga Park, Georgia, 
and June 10, he was detailed as surgeon in 
charge of the Third Division Hospital of the 
First Army Corps. He returned home, sick 
witli typhoid fever, September 10, and was 
finally mustered out with his regiment, No- 
vember 0, 1898. Dr. ('lark is a member of 
the board of managers of the .Minnesota So- 
ciety of the Sons of the Revolution. He is 
also prominent and active as a member of the 
Masonic order, and is past master of St. John's 
Lodge, No. 1, past high priest of Royal Arch 
Chapter, No. IT. and past eminent commander 
of Bayard Commandery, No. 11, of Knights 
Templar. He is interested in Christian work, 
and is a member and elder of the First Pres- 
byterian church of Stillwater. In politics the 
1 >octor is an ardent Republican. He was chair- 
man of the Republican county committee of 
Washington county in 1890, and an alternate 
delegate to the Republican National Conven- 
tion at Minneapolis in 1892. With the excep- 
tion of that of coroner, he has never held any 



political office, nor has he desired any. He 
was married, in June, 1882, to Miss Sarah A. 
Stephens, of New York City; she died Febru- 
ary 1, 1899, leaving three children. 



SAMUEL L. CAMPBELL. 

Samuel Louis Campbell, of Wabasha, one of 
the oldest living members of the bar of Minne- 
sota, was born August 10, 1824. at Columbus. 
< henango county. New York. He is of Scottish 
descent, tracing his paternal ancestry in a di- 
rect line back to that famous clan, of Argyle, 
the clan Campbells of Scotland. His grand 
father. Ephraim Campbell, was the founder of 
the American branch of the family, having set- 
tled at Stonington, Connecticut, about the year 
1872. During the Revolutionary War his home 
and personal effects were destroyed by the 
British soldiers, and he fled, with his family, 
to Xew York State. His son, Samuel — father 
of the subject of this sketch — was at that 
time seven years of age, and he was reared in 
Otsego county. New York, which was then a 
frontier locality. His early education was 
meagre and his mode of life primitive; but he 
was full of wholesome ambition, and he re- 
solved to acquire a knowledge of the law suffi- 
cient to equip him for legal practice. This he 
accomplished by himself, in nightly vigils, the 
page over which he pored being illumined only 
by the fire on his hearth. With the same de- 
termined perseverance he worked his way up 
to an acknowledged place among the foremost 
lawyers of the State of New York, and he at- 
tained to still greater distinction in the realm 
of statesmanship. During a period of twenty- 
seven years he was a member of the State As- 
sembly and Senate, and was colonel of militia 
in the War of 1812; administered justice from 
the bench of the Circuit Court for a term of 
years, and was eventually elected to Congress. 
His wife, and the mother of our subject, was 
.Maria (Queen) Campbell, a distant relative of 
Lord Baltimore, the famous early settler at 
Queeusboro. Blessed with an inheritance of 
firm and energetic character, and fortified in 
his early years by the high precepts and ex- 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



401 



ample of his parents, Samuel Louis Campbell 
grew to manhood. His studies in the common 
schools of his native county were supplemented 
by a two-years' course in the Clinton Institute, 
in the Empire State, after which he taught 
school for several years. Attracted by the 
larger business opportunities afforded young 
men in the West, he came to Minnesota, local 
ing at Red Wing in October, 1855. He at first 
took up a pre-emption claim, with the intention 
of cultivating it; but he soon abandoned the 
agricultural idea in favor of legal study. He 
removed to Wabasha, which has since been 
his place of residence, becoming associated 
about this time with Judge Welch, who was 
then Chief Justice of the Territory. Under 
Judge Welch, Mr. Campbell received the ap- 
pointment as clerk of the District Court, in 
which office he served until the admission of 
the Territory as a State. While acting as clerk 
of court, he began the practice of law, and has 
ever since followed the profession. Mr. Camp- 
bell was the second mayor elected in the town 
of Wabasha, and he has served as county at- 
torney of Wabasha county. He has been in the 
State Legislature for several years, his term 
of service being divided between the House 
and Senate, and in spite of his Democratic 
principles was made chairman of the Judiciary 
committee. Since 1879 Mr. Campbell's practice 
has been confined to railroad litigation. For 
a time his services were shared by two con- 
struction companies, viz.: the Iron Range and 
the Minnesota Southern. Afterwards he was 
retained by the Great Northern Railroad Com- 
pany, first as assistant solicitor, and later in 
connection with the land department. Mr. 
Campbell belongs to the order of Masons, hav- 
ing been made first master of the local lodge, 
in which office he served for seven years. On 
March 1, 1848, Mr. Campbell was united in 
marriage to Octavia H. Hayward, daughter of 
Dr. Levi Hayward, of Chenango county, New 
York. The three children born of their union 
are: Clarence, Ina C. — now the widow of 
Solon Huff, late of Dubuque, Iowa — and Dar- 
win H. Mrs. Campbell, though in her eightieth 
year, is still "hale and hearty as a girl." Her 
high character and attainments have made her 



a worthy companion and helpmeel of her hon- 
ored husband. Mr. Campbell is now, at the 
age of seventy-six, relaxing his hold upon the 
more arduous professional duties; but his 
name is inseparably associated, not only with 
the history of the liar of Minnesota, through 
his connection with some of the Stale's most 
important litigation, but also with the political 
and social life of his community, the welfare 
of which he has had at heart throughout his 
forty-five years of active and earnest labor in 
its midst. 



JOHN Q. ADAMS. 



In the well-filled library of his picturesque 
home on Crocus Hill, in St. Paul, whose win- 
dows overlook a broad expanse of the beautiful 
Mississippi valley, may be found, evening after 
evening throughout the year, a quiet man, ab- 
sorbed and content among his books; and this 
retired student is no other than J. Q. Adams, 
one of the most practical and enterprising busi- 
ness men of the Northwest. A glance over his 
history will show how these diverse; tastes and 
capacities have been developed side by side. 
Mr. Adams was born, on April lit, 1837, at 
Canaan, Litchfield county, Connecticut, the 
eldest child of Dr. L. S. and Eliza (Prentice) 
Adams. Both the Adams and Prentice fami- 
lies were typical New England stock, energetic, 
thrifty, from which stood out in relief here 
and there some more richly endowed person 
ality. A paternal ancestor was an officer of 
the Revolution, especially admired and trusted 
by General Washington, and who became one 
of the founders of the Society of the Cincin- 
nati; while the maternal grandfather was a 
clergyman and associate of Dr. Beecher and 
Dr. Field. In 1839 the parents of Mr. Adams 
settled in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which 
place was, even at that early date, a noted re- 
sort for people of artistic and literary tastes 
and acquirements; and in this atmosphere of 
culture the boy grew up. Gaining a liberal 
education at Williams Academy, he next en- 
gaged himself as amanuensis to the distin- 
guished English author and litterateur, G. P. 



4-02 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



A. James, Esq., who at that time resided at 
Stockbridge; and while earning a salary, he 
was incidentally adding to his general knowl- 
edge and culture. At the age of fifteen he 
accepted a clerkship in the Housatonic Bank 
at Stockbridge, which he shortly left to be- 
come a teller in the Pittsfield Bank, of which 
institution J. D. Adams, his uncle, was for 
many years manager. In 1858 he gave up this 
position to go abroad, and for nearly a year 
he traveled in Europe. Upon his return he 
entered upon the duties of a position as cashier 
under Mr. C. S. Gzowski and Sir David Mac- 
pherson, who at that time had extensive iron 
interests in Toronto, Canada. In 1865 Mr. 
Adams went to New York City, where he was 
engaged in the banking business for about 
eight years. He came from New York to 
Minnesota in 1873, and for the following 
period of about fourteen years, first at Oulutli 
and then at St. Paul, represented the old New 
York firm of David Dows & Company. .Mean- 
time he was acquiring a firm and firmer grasp 
of commercial and financial affairs in the 
Northwest ; and, in 1887, was made president 
of the Northern Pacific Elevator Company, 
with headquarters at Minneapolis. This cor- 
poration owns and operates grain elevators 
extending along the line of the Northern Pa- 
cific Railway to Puget Sound, and Mr. Adams 
had been more or less identified with the de- 
velopment of this great industry ever since 
tlie early days, when the Mississippi river was 
the main outlet in the spring for the wheat 
raised in Minnesota. Mr. Adams continued at 
the head of the Northern Pacific Elevator Com- 
pany until 1891, when he resigned. From that 
lime to the present he has been engaged in the 
grain commission business in Minneapolis, 
with his son J. TV. Adams as a partner, under 
the firm name of J. Q. Adams & Company. Mr. 
Adams is a familiar figure in the "Twin Cities," 
as he goes hither and thither attending to liis 
numerous interests; and he is the pioneer resi- 
dent of Crocus Hill, in St. Paul, a point of that 
city marked by its natural attractions and 
destined to become a highly developed and 
popular locality. On May 17, 1865, at Toronto, 
Mr. Adams was married to Ada Walker, 



daughter of Artemus B. and Adeline E. 
Walker. Their children are, a son, John 
Walker, born in New York, August 30, 1806, 
and married in 1888 to Miss Priscilla F. Horn, 
of St. Paul; and an adopted daughter, Char- 
lotte Belle, since 1888 the wife of Samuel C. 
Sticknev. also of St. Paul. 



EDWARD P. BARNCM. 

Edward Phelps Barnum, of St. Cloud, was 
born at Stonington, Connecticut, June 16, 1831. 
His father, John S. Barnum, was a native of 
Vermont, born in the town of Shoreham, in 
1804. He followed a sea-faring life, and was 
for many years captain of a ship. He died 
July 7, 1852. His wife, the mot her of Edward 
1'., was Hannah (Hobart) Barnum, a native of 
Connecticut. The subject of this sketch was 
educated in the public schools and academy 
of his native town, and four years at Troy Con- 
ference Academy at West Poultney, Vermont. 
In early youth he entered into a mercantile 
and milling business, in partnership with John 

B. Folsom, of Folsomdale, Wyoming county, 
New York, grandfather of Frances Folsom, 
who later graced the White House as the 
popular wife of President Cleveland. Mr. Fol- 
som's wife was an own cousin of Mr. Barnum's. 
In 1855 Mr! Barnum moved to Iowa, and for 
about a year ran a hotel at Des Moines with 
good success. While living at Des Moines he 
lost his only children, a boy of three years and 
a girl of eighteen months. In 1856 he removed 
to Hastings, Minnesota, erected a saw-mill, 
forming a partnership with his brother-in-law, 

C. W. Nash, and for eight years was actively 
engaged in the lumber business. In 1864 he 
was appointed by Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary 
of War, posi sutler of Fort Abercrombie. He 
served in that post for three years, then for 
an equal period of time, was proprietor of a 
hotel at Sauk Centre, known as the Sauk Cen- 
tre House. Subsequently he was for a short 
time engaged in the furniture business in the 
same town, after which he assisted in forming, 
and occupied a responsible position in, the 
Bank of Sauk Centre, which he held for some- 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



403 



thing like ten years. Tn 1890 ho purchased 
the Sauk Centre Avalanche, a Democratic 
organ, in the interesl of liis son. F. E. Barnum. 
The sen edited it during the first year after 
its purchase, then Mr. Barnum himself took 
up the editorial work for a year. The 
Avalanche is still nourishing, and is now un- 
der the management of the junior Barnum. 
Mr. Barnum's political principles are well 
known as loyally Democratic. He has been 
twice complimented by his constituency in 
Minnesota with a nomination for the position 
of Lieutenant Governor, the first time on the 
ticket with Edmund Rice for Governor, and 
the second with Gen. R. \V. Johnson. He was 
also his party's candidate for Congress from 
what was known as the "bloody Sixth" dis- 
trict, during the famous "Kindred-Nelson" 
campaign. In ISTii Mr. Barnum was elected 
a member of the board of county commission- 
ers for Stearns county for three years, and 
served one year as chairman of that body. In 
1891 he was elected enrolling clerk of the State 
Senate. In the following year, on the resigna- 
tion of A. L. Cramb, he received an appoint- 
ment to the office of clerk of court. Seventh 
Judicial District of Stearns county; and in the 
fall of 1894 he was duly elected to that post 
for the regular period of four years by a large 
majority, and in 1898 was re-elected without 
opposition. Mr. Barnum has belonged to the 
order of Masons for well on to half a century, 
and the main events of his history in Masonry 
are as follows: In February of 1857, at Hast- 
ings, Minnesota, he was made a Master Mason; 
in 1860, a Royal Arch Mason; in 1863, Knighl 
Templar in Damascus Commandery of St. 
Paul; in 1894, a member of the Mystic Shrine 
in Osman Temple, St. Paul. In 1868 he re- 
ceived from the Grand Lodge the appointment 
of district deputy, in which capacity he as- 
sisted in the dissemination throughout the 
State of the present ritual work; and in the 
following year he was elected grand junior 
warden. In 1893 he was appointed to the 
board of .custodians of the work over which 
he now presides as chairman. Mr. Barnum 
was married April 15, 1852, to Miss Irene E. 
Barnum. a native of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Her 



parents were J. Wesley Barnum, of Shoreham, 
Vermont, and Harriet /., daughter of Col. 
William Frosl of Michigan, formerly of Gene- 
see county. New York. One son. Francis E. 
Barnum, above referred to in connection with 
the Sauk Centre Avalanche, is the only re 
maining issue of their union. Mr. Barnum 
enjoys a wide popularity. His career has been 
one of varied enterprises, and in each he has 
made a host of friends and acquaintances. 
Among the newspaper fraternity he is held in 
especial esteem. His attendance is always 
counted upon at the conventions and excur- 
sions of Minnesota editors, and although he 
is older than most members of the present 
editorial staff, his youthful and genial tem- 
perament make him equally companionable to 
all. In their annual excursion of September 
last, which included a visit to Denver, Colo- 
rado Springs and the Omaha Exposition, he 
contributed a conspicuous share towards the 
success and enlivenment of the trip. Mrs. 
Barnum, also, is gifted with many social qual- 
ities, a fact well appreciated by the numerous 
friends who have enjoyed the hospitality of the 
Barnum home circle. 



WILLIAM I'. CLOUGH. 

William Pitt Clough, of St. Paul, was born 
March 2(1, 1845, at Freetown, Cortland county, 
New York, lie is the son of William Parks 
and Sabrina (Vunk) Clough, both of whom. 
also, were natives of the Empire State. The 
Yunks were a Dutch family that settled early 
in this country, while on the paternal side he 
was descended from John Clough, who, in the 
year IS.",,"), crossed from England to Massa- 
chusetts, in the ship "Elizabeth," and settled 
at Watertown, which has since been annexed 
to Boston. John Clough was one of the found- 
ers of Salisbury, a town in the northeastern 
part of Massachusetts, and his numerous de- 
scendants are now scattered throughout New 
York, New England and other portions of the 
East. The great-grandfather of our subject, 
Benjamin Clough, was a soldier of the Revo- 
lution, who served in the New York division 



404 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



df the Continental army, from 1770 to the cud 
of the war. His home was in Hampshire 
county, Massachusetts, near the New York 
line. When William Pitt Clough was three 
years of age, his father, who had been a mer- 
chant in the village of Freetown, took his 
family to Pennsylvania and settled in Erie 
county, where the child grew up and obtained 
his early education. As soon as ready for col- 
legiate work, he entered the Northwestern 
State Normal School, at Edinboro, Pennsyl- 
vania, where he completed the collegiate 
course in 1862. During the next three years 
lie was chiefly occupied in teaching in Penn- 
sylvania and in his native State. Then for a 
couple of years he was employed in business 
enterprises en Oil Creek, in Venango county, 
Pennsylvania, meantime filling intervals of 
leisure with law reading at Edinboro, in the 
office of Henry R. Terry, Esq. By the spring 
of 1867 he was nearly prepared for admission 
to the liar. But it was the bar of Minnesota 
that was to enroll him among its members; 
for favorable opportunities opened to him 
which involved his hasty removal to this State, 
where he arrived on the first day of June of 
that year. He entered the law office of ex- 
Judge E. A. McMahon, at Rochester, in the 
joint capacity of assistant and student, and. 
on .Inly :',. 1868, was there admitted to the bar. 
He then united with Judge McMahon in a part- 
nership, which continued for four years. Since 
Hie summer of is"!' Mr. Clough has been a 
resident of St. Paul. During his first few years 
after locating there he was associated with 
Hon. John M. Gilman, one of the city's oldest 
and best known counselors. In this connec- 
tion Mr. Clough gained prominence, and in 
1880 he received appointment as general west- 
ern counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad 
( 'onipany. For nearly seven years he remained 
in this service, resigning it May 31, 1887. Ou 
June 1, he entered the service of the Saint 
Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway Com 
pany, assuming the position of assistant to 
President .lames .1. Hill, of that company, and 
on December 20, of the same year, he was ap- 
pointed second vice-president. On February 
1, 181)0, when the (ireat Northern Railway 



Company was organized, Mr. Clough was 
elected to his present position as vice presi- 
ded of this company. Mr. Clough's western 
life and married life are co-extensive, he hav- 
ing wedded Miss Dacia Alathea Green, a 
young lady of exceptional attainments, on the 
day of his departure from the East. The par- 
ents of Miss Green were, by birth, representa- 
tives of New York and New England, though 
the father. Alfred Green, became a contractor 
and builder of Erie county, Pennsylvania, 
where his daughter was born. Mrs. Clough 
died at St. Paul in 1892, and is well remem- 
bered, as she was well known for the virtues 
and graces of her character. Mr. and Mrs. 
Clough had two daughters, Margaret S. and 
Blanche M., the former being now the wife of 
Charles L. Spencer, clerk of the United States 
District Court at St. Paul. 



CHARLES C. WILLSON. 

Charles Cudworth Willson, of Rochester, 
was born October 27. 1829, at Mansfield, Cat- 
taraugus county. New York. His father, Gid- 
eon Ilovey Willson, and his mother, Lydia 
Mauley, were both born at Newfane, near Brat- 
tleboro, Vermont. His grandparents were all 
born at Rehobeth, Massachusetts, about thirty- 
five miles southwest of Plymouth Rock. 
Farming was the sole occupation of all these 
ancestors. The subject of this sketch was edu- 
cated at an academy in Springville, Erie conn 
ty, New York. When eighteen years old he 
went to Geneseo, Livingston county. New 
York, and there studied law in the office of 
Gen. James Wood. Jr. lie was admitted to 
Hie bar September '■'>, 1851, at Rochester, New- 
York. Soon after he formed a partnership 
with William A. Collins, and practiced his 
profession at Geneseo until July. 1856. At 
that time he sold his interest in the business 
and removed to Rochester, Minnesota, then a 
mere hamlet. He at that time bought forty 
town lots in the original plat of the town. He 
went back and opened a law office in Roches 
ter. New York, but as his investments in Olm- 
sted county required much of his time, he re- 
moved there in June, 1858. and there he has 







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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



405 



ever since resided. Mr. Willson was for many 
years interested in farming. He pursued it as 
a recreation from the labors of his law prac- 
tice. From 1875 to 1891 he owned and culti- 
vated a farm of fourteen hundred acres two 
miles northeast of the city. In 1878 he had 
one thousand acres of wheal in one field. This 
was the largest farm ever held by one man in 
thai county. In 1891 he sold his farm in par- 
cels, and has since devoted his entire attention 
lo the practice of the law. His professional 
library includes the reports of nearly all the 
Northern Slates, the federal reports and all 
the English reports of the last fifty years and 
many prior volumes. He edited twelve vol- 
umes of Minnesota Reports, viz.: Vols, ts to 
59, inclusive. Many young men have studied 
law in his office; among them are Hon. John 
Allen, United Stales Senator from Washing- 
ton, and Hon. Porter .1. McCumber, United 
Stales Senator from North Dakota. He has 
had no partner in business since he came lo 
Minnesota. In 1878-9, he built and still occu- 
pies, on College Hill, the most expensive 
dwelling house in Olmsted county. The grounds 
cover twenty acres of elevated land in the 
western part of the city. In politics he was 
a Democrat, until the Chicago platform of 
1896 estranged him. lie has not since allied 
himself with either parly. He has always re- 
fused to be a candidate for office, believing 
politics to be a disappointing and unprom- 
ising vocation. For forty years Mr. Willson 
has attended the services of the Episcopal 
church. His wife and eight children are all 
members. He was married, in February, 1862, 
to Miss Annie Rosebrugh, of Hamilton, On- 
tario, Canada. He is of light complexion, over 
five feet ten inches in height, stands erect, 
weighs one hundred and ninety pounds, and 
has been in such health as lo be up and about 
his business every da\ in the last forty years. 
He has never joined any church or secret so- 
ciety. He is often in the courts in the southern 
part of the Stale and in St. Paul. He has been 
engaged in much of the important litigation 
in his vicinity and has several times received 
a fee of five thousand dollars or more in a 
single case. 



CHARLES d'AUTREMONT. 

Hon. Charles d'Autremont, of Duluth, was 
born at Angelica, New York, June 2, 1851. To 
be well born, to come of honorable and distin- 
guished ancestry, is of advantage to any man. 
On the paternal side .Mr. d'Autremont is de- 
scended from an ancient and distinguished 
French family. His great-grandfather was Hu- 
bert d'Autremont, a Frenchman who died 
prior to the French Revolution, leaving a 
widow. .Madame Marie Jeanne d'Ohet d'Autre- 
mont, and their sons, named Louis Paul, Alex- 
ander Hubert, and Auguste Francois Cecile. 
The family were prominent Royalists, and upon 
the outbreak of the French Revolution, when 
so many crimes were perpetrated in the name 
of liberty, they were in extreme peril. In 1792 
Mine. d'Autremont contrived to escape from 
France, and with her three sons came to Amer- 
ica, and settled on a tract of land — previously 
secured — on (he Chenango river, in the State 
of New York. In a short time, however, they 
removed to Asylum, the site of a colony estab- 
lished by French Royalists on the Susque- 
hanna river, near the present town of Towanda, 
Pennsylvania. A few years later the oldest 
son, Louis, returned to France as secretary 
to the great statesman and diplomat, the inim- 
itable Talleyrand; subsequently he was sent 
to England and Portugal as the representative 
of the French Governmenl at the respective 
courts. In 1800. when I he first Napoleon had 
granted amnesty to all those who had left 
France during the "reign of terror." the colony 
of Asylum was broken up, nearly all of its 
members returning to their native country. 
Mine. d'Autremont, however, with her two 
sons, went back to their first American homo 
on the Chenango. In 1806 she purchased a 
tract of land on the Genesee river, and re- 
moved with her family to Angelica, New York, 
where very many of their descendants have 
since lived. Charles d'Autremont, the subject 
hereof, is directly descended from Alexander 
Hubert d'Autremont, who was his grandfather, 
ami whose son Charles retired from active 
business pursuits in early life, but continued 
lo reside al Angelica until his death, in 1891. 



406 



BTOGRArilY OF MINNESOTA. 



The sun was named for the father. Mr. d'Au- 
tremont's mother was a daughter of Judge 
John Collins, of Angelica, a native of Connec- 
ticut, and of Ann Gregory Collins, an English 
lady. Judge Collins was an officer of the 
American army during the War of 1812, and 
after the close of the war he, with others, pur- 
chased a large tract of land in Alleghany 
county. New York, and settled thereon with a 
view of practicing his profession as a lawyer 
and of disposing of his land. He began his 
scholastic education at Angelica Academy, 
and in 1868 entered Cornell University. By 
reason of continued ill health he was compelled 
to leave college at the end of his junior year, 
and went to Lausanne. Switzerland, where he 
spent some time in attendance at the academy 
in that historic old town. Upon his return to 
America in 1S72, he began the study of law in 
the office of his uncle. .Judge John G. Collins, 
at Angelica, and so continued for a year. He 
then entered Columbia Law School, from 
which institution he graduated in the spring 
of 1ST."). After a summer in Europe he entered 
the law office of Hart & McGuire, at Elmira, 
New York, but two years later opened an office 
of his own. In 1S7!> he again made a visit to 
Europe. In the fall of 1882, Mr. d'Autremont 
was stopping temporarily in Duluth on his re- 
turn home from a hunting trip out on the little 
Missouri, in Montana. Missing the lake steam- 
er, he was compelled to remain over for several 
days. This delay enabled him to become ac- 
quainted with the town and many of its 
people, and he became so favorably impressed 
with the place that immediately upon reaching 
his home at Elmira he closed up his affairs 
there and returned with his family to the 
"Zenith City of the unsalted sea." The people 
took kindly to him, and two years later, or in 
1884, he was elected county attorney of St. 
Louis county. Here he has since remained in 
the active and successful practice of his pro- 
fession and in exploring for and developing 
iron mines, in which he is largely interested. 
Mr. d'Autremont has always been a Democrat 
in politics, steadfastly and consistently "with- 
out variableness or shadow of turning." When 
he was but twenty-one he took an active part 



in the Greeley campaign in New York. In the 
Tilden and Hendricks canvass of 1876, he was 
president of the Elmira Democratic Club, and 
helped carry the Slate for the great statesmen 
who were the standard bearers of his party. 
In the Hancock campaign of 1880 he was again 
president of the Democratic Club, and made 
speaking tours through New York and Penn- 
sylvania in behalf of the ticket. While residing 
in Elmira he was a member of the board of 
supervisors of Chemung county. As mentioned, 
he was elected county attorney of St. Louis 
county, Minnesota, in 1884. In 1888, when 
there was no possibility of an election in the 
face of the great Republican majority, he was 
the Democratic candidate for Attorney Gen- 
eral of Minnesota, but with his associates on 
the ticket, was defeated. In 1896 he was a can- 
didate for presidential elector on the regular 
Democratic or Bryan and Sewall ticket. He 
has made repeated public canvasses for his 
party in this State, and his services as a speak- 
er are often demanded. Tn lS ( .t2, he was elected 
mayor of Duluth, and served one term. His 
election was really a tribute of his fellow citi- 
zens to him, and as much of a personal triumph 
as a party success. His administration justi- 
fied the expectations of his friends, and was a 
valuable one for the city and its interests. Of 
social tastes and in full fellowship with his 
brother man, Mr. d'Autremont is well known 
in certain circles. He is charter member of 
Kitchie Gammi Club of Duluth. a Sir Knight 
of St. Omar's Commandery of Elmira, New 
York, a member of the 1'si Upsilon fraternity, 
etc. Mr. d'Autremont was married. April 21, 
1880, to Miss Hattie II. Hart, a daughter of 
E. 1*. Hart, Esq., long an eminent lawyer of 
Elmira, New York. They have five promising 
children, named Antoinette, Louis Paul, 
Charles .Maurice, Hubert Hart and Marie Gene- 
vieve. 



CHARLES A. TOWNE. 

Charles Arnette Towne, ex Congressman 
from the Sixth District of Minnesota and a 
prominent citizen of Duluth, is a native of the 
State of Michigan, born on a farm in Rose 




The Cenuiiy Publishing & Engraving Co Oucarf(r 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



407 



township, Oakland county, November 21, 1858. 
He is the son of Charles Judson and Laura 
(Fargo) Towne, both parents being extracted 
from Puritan stock. On the paternal side, the 
original settlers in America were John William 
and Joanna (Blessing) Towne, who, in 1636, 
came from the west of England to Salem, Mas 
sachusetts. Our subject is directly descended 
from these emigrating ancestors, and in the 
intermediate generations have appeared, here 
and there, men of distinct ability and achieve- 
ment. Among these may be mentioned Gen. 
Salem Towne, famous for his generalship in 
the War of 1812; also a literary Salem Towne, 
author of a series of text books. The grand- 
father of Charles A. — Levi Towne — was a na- 
tive of New Hampshire who early removed 
with his parents to Wyoming county. New 
York. Glancing now at the history of the ma- 
ternal side of the house, we find that Laura 
Fargo — the mother of Mr. Towne — was con- 
nected through the Mason family with George 
Washington, and was a descendant, on her 
mother's side, of the old New England family 
of Lawrence, to which belonged Amos and Ab- 
bott Lawrence, famous respectively as philan- 
thropist and minister to England. Mr. Towne's 
parents were married in the year 1857. in Wy- 
oming county, New York, and settled prior to 
his birth in Michigan. The boy was educated 
in his native State, graduating from the Uni- 
versity at Ann Arbor in 1881. In college he 
showed decided oratorical power, and was 
made class orator for his senior year. Subse- 
quently he was offered the English professor- 
ship at the Ann Arbor preparatory school. 
This he declined, as also the chair of Latin and 
Modern Languages at the Orchard Lake Mili- 
tary Academy, being attracted to a legal rath- 
er than a pedagogic career. Soon after leaving 
college, he accepted the position of chief clerk 
in the Department of Public Instruction at 
Lansing, Michigan, beginning about the same 
time the study of law, which he ambitiously 
pursued at night, after completing his day's 
work. In April, 1885, he was admitted to the 
bar in the Supreme Court of Michigan, and in 
March of the following year, commenced prac- 
tice at Marquette, in partnership with W. S. 



Hill. From his youth Mr. Towne has been 
much interested in politics, and as early as 
1884 his name was brought into prominence 
by the Lansing Republican as a candidate for 
Congress from that district. In 1888, in conse 
quence of the death of Seth C. Moffat, Con- 
gressman from the Eleventh District of 
Michigan, a special election was held to secure 
his successor. Mr. Towne was offered a nomi- 
nation, but declined to run for the position, 
to which Hon. Henry W. Seymour, of Sault 
Ste. Marie, was duly elected. In the spring of 
1889 Mr. Towne moved to Chicago, where he 
practiced his profession until June, 1890. In 
the following August he came to Minnesota, 
locating in Duluth, where he formed a partner- 
ship with S. L. Smith. At the beginning of 
1892, the former connection having been dis- 
solved, he became a member of the firm of 
Moer, Towne & Harris, which, during the fol- 
lowing year, was modified by the withdrawal 
of Mr. Moer, upon his election to the District 
Bench, Mr. Towne thus becoming senior mem- 
ber of the present firm of Towne & Harris. Mr. 
Towne first appeared as a st 11111)1 speaker in 
1876, and since that year he has been generally 
active in politics; but he never accepted a can- 
didacy for any public office until the campaign 
in which he was elected, by a majority of over 
three thousand votes over two competitors, to 
the Fifty-fourth Congress. He has been 
brought into special prominence by the atti- 
tude which he took, and has consistently sus- 
tained, in regard to that very vital issue in our 
National politics comprehended in the term bi- 
metallism. In the fall of ISO."? he began a 
systematic study of the money question, and 
as the result of his investigations he came out 
strongly in favor of re-opening the mints of 
our country to the free coinage of silver as well 
as of gold. The Republican platforms of both 
L888 and 1892 had been explicitly in favor of 
restoring to silver its full dignity as standard 
money; but in the campaign for Congress, in 
1894, Mr. Towne was even more emphatic in 
this direction than the preceding Republican 
platforms. After his election to Congress, he 
stumped various parts of his district in the 
cause of bimetallism, and after taking his seat 



408 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



at Washington he became prominent in the 
Republican rebellion against a measure intro- 
duced by Speaker Reed and other leaders of 
the party, which provided for the issuance of 
$500,000,000 of bonds and the practical with- 
drawal of greenbacks from circulation. Mr. 
Towne was quick to recognize the significance 
of this movement, and was one of the first to 
inform the public of 'the tendency of Repub- 
lican leaders towards the gold standard. The 
decided stand which he took at this juncture 
began the divergence between him and t In- 
party leaders, which resulted in bis severance 
from the Republican organization in June, 
189(1, when, in its National Convention at St. 
Louis, it adopted a platform virtually renounc- 
ing bimetallism and looking clearly towards 
an absolute gold standard. Something of what 
it cost him thus to break away from the party 
of his early choice and faith will be understood 
by those who have read his famous speech de- 
livered in the House of Representatives on 
February 8, 1890, in the course of which he 
said: 

"The Republican party is dear to me. My 
ancestors were Federalists and Whigs of New 
England. My father followed the standard of 
Fremont and Dayton to the glorious defeat of 
1856. The infancy of the Republican party 
rocked my own cradle. Since my youth I have 
treasured the deathless fame of its great lead- 
ers, studied and professed its doctrines, bene- 
fited by its policies, and wielded ceaselessly 
what little strength was mine in its strenuous 
contests for the confidence of the people. My 
anxiety that it shall now rise level with the 
emergency that meets us is greater than I can 
express." 

This speech, which was a most forceful pres- 
entation of the claims of bimetallism and ap- 
peal for its adoption, produced a profound 
impression throughout the country. It was 
begun upon a time allowance of half an hour, 
but was granted repeated extensions, and 
finally time limit was waived altogether. For 
nearly three hours he held his audience by his 
earnest eloquence; and this speech, which was 
subsequently printed, is said to have been more 
widely circulated as a campaign document 
than any other ever delivered in Congress. Mr. 
Towne loved his party; but when he came to 



the point where he felt he must choose between 
party allegiance and principle, he followed the 
course which the brave, strong men of all ages 
have taken, even though it led him. for a time, 
at least, away from political success and pies 
tige. He announced thai he could not accept 
a re-nomination for Congress on the Repub- 
lican ticket. With an unanimous impulse, 
however, the Democrats, Populists and Silver 
Republicans of his district adopted him as 
their candidate, and he consented to run in 
opposition to the Republican platform. In the 
ensuing campaign — the most notable in the 
history of the country for the intensity, both 
of the struggle itself and the general interest 
it awakened — although the normal Republican 
majority in Mr. Towne's district was several 
thousands, the returns showed the meagre 
margin of 712 votes against him; and two years 
later he was supported by the same combina- 
tion of forces, which this time failed of elect- 
ing him by a plurality of only 441 votes. In 
the month of February, 1N97, together with 
Senators Henry M. Teller, of Colorado; Rich- 
ard F. Pettigrew, of South Dakota; Fred T. 
Dubois, of Idaho; Frank J. Cannon, of Utah, 
and Congressman Charles S. Ilartman. of Mon- 
tana. Mr. Towne initiated the organization of 
the Silver Republican party, and became chair- 
man of the Provisional National Committee. 
In the following June the National Committee 
was regularly constituted by representatives of 
thirty-one Stales, and Mr. Towne was made 
chairman, which post he still fills. Although 
a very busy man, Mr. Towne has clung to his 
student habits ever since his college days. He 
realizes that only study — deep, earnest, com- 
prehensive mental toil — can qualify a man to 
deal with the questions, so complex in their 
nature, which involve the welfare of State and 
Nation; and he has responded to his call to 
public duty with the sincerest conviction and 
clearest inspiration. Within the last four years 
he has delivered addresses in nearly all the 
important cities of the United States, his range 
of subject matter including finance, imperial- 
ism, trusts, and general political, literary and 
miscellaneous topics. On February 22, 1899, 
before the faculty and students of the Univer- 



BIOGRAFHY OF MINNESOTA. 



409 



sity of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, he made an ad- 
dress from the theme "Lest We Forget" which 
was a most logical and fervent plea for the 
spirit of universal democracy and brotherhood. 
He said in part: 

"The attempt is made to fire the imagination 
of the people with much talk of the opportu- 
nity now presented to us of becoming a 'world 
power.' Why, my friends, what is it to bo a 
world power? Is it not to be a power in the 
world? and if so, where is there a greater 
world power than the United States, or than 
she has been for more than a hundred years? 
During all that time America has carried the 
torch that has lighted the pathway of liberty 
for the nations of the earth. Our reaction upon 
Europe has crumbled dynasties to dust, and 
above the graves of privilege has reared re- 
publics and parliaments. Within that century 
nearly five hundred constitutions have been 
born, none of which would have been possible 
but for ours. The South American republics, 
not coddled into perpetual infancy, but de- 
fended in natural, self-taught, and therefore 
sure, progress, have risen up and called us 
blessed. Wherever representative government 
has been planted, wherever new guaranties of 
personal security and political rights have been 
won, wherever religious liberty has widened 
and the freedom of the pros* increased, there 
has been witnessed the force of American ex- 
ample, which, though gentle as the 'sweet in- 
fluence of the Pleiades,' speaks louder than 
the thunder of our guns and moves with more 
resistless might than armies. And what can 
empire offer us for this? A rivalship with 
swaggering kingdoms, seeking loot and license 
of their weaker neighbors, snatching our share 
of plunder that we do not need, marching back 
three centuries over the fallen and shattered 
idols of our storied progress; earning the fear 
of every victim and the jealous hatred of every 
rival, where we might have retained the love of 
the one and, at least, the respect of the other. 
One of the last of the sage observations of the 
great Bismarck was elicited by the prospect of 
the Spanish war. He said: 'The result of the 
war cannot be wholesome to Europe or Amer- 
ica. The United States will be forced to adopt 
an intermeddling policy leading to unavoidable 
friction. * * * * The American change 
of front means retrogression, in the high sense, 
of civilization. This is the main regrettable 
fact about the war.' If. my friends, we do not 
resist and conquer the forces that are now set- 
ting toward an American empire in the eastern 
tropics, with its inevitable resultant hnperial- 



istic modification of our domestic institutions, 
the prophecy of Bismarck will surely become 
the judgment of history. It will be ours eter- 
nally to hear the odium of having stopped the 
car of progress anil turned it backward. From 
so melancholy a reproach as that, it is, in my 
judgment, the duty of every true American to 
strive to the uttermost to save his country. To 
such high resolves, what time could give so 
deep and strong a sanction as the birthday of 
Washington? He was an American in every 
fibre of his being, devoted absolutely to his 
country, hopeful of her future, and profoundly 
attached to the Union under the Constitution. 
He believed in the legitimate growth of the 
Inited States, gave much lime to the study 
of routes and waterways to the westward, 
along which he knew the tide of civilization 
was sure to set. and his prophetic vision fore- 
saw the gradual assimilation of the continent 
by the spreading settlements from the earlier 
centers of population. Has the movement yet 
reached its limit? Is congested humanity 
crowding us into the sea? Why, my friends, 
opportunities greater than all the Orient, rich- 
er than 'barbaric pearl and gold,' await our 
enterprise, when it shall be disenthralled, with- 
in the present limits of the Republic. And 
when that shall have been subdued, the rest of 
this vast continent is ours by a law as certain 
in its result as it will be peaceable in its ac- 
complishment. Were Washington alive to-day, 
he would be to that extent an 'expansionist'; 
but we may be sure thai he who left to poster- 
ity the priceless political testament of the 
'Farewell Address' would as certainly and 
steadily have opposed imperialism in the form 
of a distant colonial dependency, as he turned 
his back upon the offer of kingly power and 
'put away the crown.' Ages and ages ago, from 
the plains of Asia our Aryan forefathers 
turned their faces westward and entered upon 
that world-march whose record is the story of 
human progress. Their institutions grew as 
their journey lengthened, until at last we, their 
descendants, standing by the great sea from 
beyond whose farther shore their earth-round 
course began, are dowered with priceless con- 
stitutional liberties won by the struggles and 
sacrifices, the strenuous strife of muscle and 
brain and spirit, of six thousand years. My 
friends, as we cross that ocean returning to- 
ward our ancestral home, what shall be our 
message to the peoples that were left behind? 
Shall it be peace or war. the cruelty and bond- 
age of the empire or the friendship and 
freedom of the Republic?" 

On April 20, 1887, Mr. Towne was married 



4io 



biography or Minnesota. 



to Maude Irene Wiley, of Lansing, Michigan, 
;i daughter of Washington O. and Mary (Green) 
Wiley, both natives of Cooperstown, New York. 
Mr. and Mrs. Towne have no children. Like 
every man who takes a fearless stand for ad- 
vanced ideals and radical measures. Mr. Towne 
makes some enemies, but he wins many loyal 
friends who. like himself, represent the van- 
guard of political and social Reformers. The 
following sincere words of commendation are 
from George Fred Williams, a prominent legal 
counsellor of Boston, Massachusetts: 

"I regard Mr. Towne as one of the aides! of 
the political leaders in the United Stales, and 
make no except ion whatever in the whole coun- 
try in saying that his opportunities for useful- 
ness to the people are not excelled by any 
other man. He is very prompt and incisive in 
action, alert in thought, careful in judgment, 
and wonderfully gifted with the power of 
speech. There is no orator in the country who 
makes a more marked impression upon me, and 
that, perhaps, is the only test which anyone 
can apply in forming a judgment of a public 
speaker.' But above all his qualities, I con- 
sider Mr. Towne's independence in thought and 
sincere i*egard for truth and right to be his 
most distinguishing qualities. While he is a 
good tactician, it is the tremendous energy 
with which his sincerity and enthusiasm en- 
dow him that makes him the power he is among 
men. Grant him long life and he will surely 
be one of the marked figures in American his 
tory. The above practically contains my esti- 
mate of Mr.Towne's strong points as a political 
leader, not to mention the one which I treasure 
most as a friend, viz.. his personal charm ami 
magnetism. I think there are few men with 
such force of character who can at the same 
time retain the affectionate regard of those 
with whom they associate." 

Col. William -1. Bryan, writing from Austin. 
Texas, March It, 1900, aptly sums up Mr. 
Towne's characteristics as follows: •'Von can 
quote me as saying that, 'as a citizen, orator 
and patriot. Charles A. Towne has no superior 
in the United States.' " 



CORDENIO A. SEVERANCE. 

The ancestors of Cordenio Arnold Severance, 
of St. Paul, were of old New England stock, 
his mother's family residing in Connecticut and 



Rhode Island for several generations. His 
father's family came to Boston from Ipswich, 
England, in 1637, and lived in Massachusetts 

continuously from that time down to the early 
part of this century, when the grandfather of 
Cordenio moved to Pennsylvania. Some of the 
family were officers in the colonial wars prior 
to the Revolution, and the greatgrandfather 
of Mr. Severance, although an old man, served 
for a short time in the Revolutionary War. 
Mr. E. C. Severance, father of our subject, was 
born in Susquehanna county, Pennsylvania, 
and engaged in the mercantile business, lum- 
bering and farming in Pennsylvania and Minne- 
sota. He came to Minnesota in 1855, and has 
resided here ever since. He was county auditor 
of Dodge county, in this State, for six years, 
and was. about fifteen years ago. State Senator 
from that county. His wife, Amanda J. 
(Arnold) Severance, was born in Connecticut 
and reared in Michigan. She died March <>. 
1894, sincerely mourned by her family and by 
every one who knew her. She had lived an 
earnest Christian life. Cordenio Arnold was 
born at Mantorville, Dodge county, Minnesota. 
June 30, 1S62. He attended the public and 
high schools in that village, and was for about 
three years at Carleton College, Northfield. 
For one year while attending Carleton hi' was 
president of his class. After leaving college 
he studied law for a time with Hon. Robert 
Ta.\ lor, of Kasson, Minnesota, and was ad- 
mitted to the bar on the day he was twenty- 
one years of age. He was examined for 
admission two or three months previously, the 
court making an order that he should be ad- 
mitted as soon as he was old enough to take 
the oath. Mr. Severance entered the office of 
Senator Davis, in St. Paul, in the summer of 
1885, and in January, 1SST. became his 
partner. The firm of Davis. Kellogg & 
Severance was formed the first of October, 
1S87. This firm enjoys a very large practice. 
and has handled a large number of important 
cases in this State. Mr. Severance is a Repub- 
lican in politics. He has never filled any 
official position, however, and has never been 
a candidate for any. He is a member of the 
Kitchi Canimi Club of Duluth, the Minnesota 





^J^fe^bcr 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



411 



Club and the Town and Country Club of St. 
Paul. He has been one of the board of gover- 
nors of the Ramsey County Bar Association. 
June 26, 18S9, Mr. Severance was married to 
Miss .Mary Frances Harriman, a daughter of 
Gen. Samuel Harriman. of Wisconsin. To 
them one daughter, Alexandra, was born 
in 1894 and died in 1895. Mr. Severance is not 
a member of any church, but usually attends 
the House of Hope Presbyterian church, of 
which Mrs. Severance is a member. Mr. and 
Mrs. Severance reside at 589 Summit avenue, 
St. Paul. 



JOHN A. MATHEWS. 

Hon. John Arnot Mathews, one of the 

earliest settlers of Winona, Minnesota, and for 
forty-five years a prominent resident and busi- 
ness man of that city, was born in Elmira, New 
York, April 6, 1824. He was the oldest of a 
family of nine children, six of whom became 
citizens of Minnesota. His father, Henry H. 
Mathews, who was bom in Chemung county, 
New York, was a son of Col. Selah Mathews, 
who with several brothers removed from 
Orange county to Chemung about 1790. 
Colonel Mathews was for many years a promi- 
nent and well-known citizen of the latter 
county — then called Tioga. His brother, (lea. 
Vincent Mathews, was United States district 
attorney for the Western District of New York, 
for many years served in both branches of the 
Legislature, and was a member of Congress. 
He was a prominent lawyer, and tor forty 
years was at the head of the Elmira bar. Gen- 
eral Mathews died at Rochester, New York, in 
1847. In 1819, when a young man, Henry H. 
Mathews entered the store of John Arnot, at 
Elmira. In 1823 he married Isabella M. Arnot, 
a sister of his employer, and a native of Perth- 
shire, Scotland, who came to America with the 
family about 1803. He then engaged in mer- 
chandising with Mr. Arnot at Painted Post, 
New York, and later, upon the retirement of 
his brother-in-law, took entire charge of the 
business. While at Painted Post, where lie 
resided for more than twenty years, he became 



a leading citizen, anil held many responsible 
positions. In 1843 he returned to Elmira, and, 
in 1849, was appointed by President Taylor 
postmaster of the city, which position he held 
for several years. The original paternal an- 
cestor of the Mathews family in America came 
to this country from England with Benjamin 
Fletcher, who was appointed Colonial Gover- 
nor of New York in 1092, and to whom he was 
closely related by marriage. The boyhood da \ s 
of John A. Mathews were passed in his native 
town and at Painted Post, New York. He be- 
came familiar with business methods in his 
father's store at the latter town. When he was 
nineteen years of age, he returned to Elmira, 
where he attended school and worked on his 
father's farm for two years. Then, in 1845, 
having reached the age of twenty-one, he went 
to Tioga. Pennsylvania, where lie was a clerk 
in the store of I!. ( '. Wickham & Company for 
about two years. The junior partner was T. 
L. Baldwin, and later .Mr. Mathews purchased 
the interest of Wickham, and the firm became 
T. L. Baldwin & ( 'ompany. This firm conducted 
an extensive and successful business, until 
1853, when he sold his interest to his partner, 
T. L. Baldwin. In 1854 Mr. Mathews came to 
the Northwest in search of a permanent home. 
He first inspected the situation at McGregor, 
Iowa; later he explored the pine woods of Wis- 
consin, with a view to engaging in the lumber 
business. At that time there was a United 
States land office at Steven's Point, Wisconsin, 
which he visited, and he was al once attracted 
by the opportunities presented for dealing in 
land warrants and locating them on credit to 
actual settlers. There was also a land office 
at Brownsville, in Houston county, Minnesota. 
Returning to McGregor to make certain neces- 
sary preparations, Mr. Mathews came up the 
river again, and set out from Brownsville on 
an exploring tour through Southeastern Minne- 
sota. From a small stern-wheel steamboat in 
July. 1854, he landed at Winona, then a small 
frontier village recently established as a county 
seat. He was not favorably impressed with 
the appearance and surroundings of the place 
at the time, and continued his trip. From Red 
Wing he journeyed on foot throughout the 



412 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



southeastern part of the theu Territory, as 
far west as Faribault. After this thorough and 
careful inspection of the country, and having 
made several selections from which to choose, 
he returned to his native State, and October 
9, 1855, he was married to Miss Ellen B. Bush, 
a native of Tioga, Pennsylvania, and a daugh- 
ter of A. C. Bush of that place. Their wedding 
took place at Tioga, and they at once started 
for Winona, where a United States land office 
had been located in the spring of that year, 
arriving in time for the first land sales — a 
great event in the history of the city. Mr. 
Mathews began at once to deal in land war- 
rants, to locate lands, and to loan money. His 
first business was done in the office of Berry 
& Waterman, attorneys, on Front street, where 
the Winona Mill Company mill was afterwards 
built; then in Dr. Sheardown's drug store, also 
on Front street, opposite the land office. In 
1856 Mr. Mathews built an office near by, which 
was burned in 1802. He was again burned out 
on the east side of Center street, between Front 
and Second streets, and removed to Hilberl 
Block. In 1887 he fitted up offices in his own 
building on West Third street, where he has 
since remained. For about a year, half his 
time was spent in the land office. He did a 
good business in these lines until the land office 
was removed to Faribault, in January, 1857. 
Mr. Mathews has now been engaged in the loan 
business for forty-five years, making a specialty 
of farm loans, and has been fairly successful. 
He has always taken an active and practical 
part in the advancement and the general wel- 
fare of his adopted city, witli whose interests 
he has been identified for nearly half a cen- 
tury. He was one of the five incorporators and 
the first president of the Winona Street Bail 
way Company, which was organized in 1883. 
For four terms he was mayor of the city — 
in 1868-9, 1869-70, 1873-4 and in 1887-8. His 
official services were highly satisfactory to his 
fellow-citizens. He was true to his convictions 
of duty, and was always decidedly opposed to 
the issue of bonds by the city in aid of 
railroads, regardless of the fact that he was 
a stockholder and one of the directors in the 
Winona & Southwestern Railroad Company, 



at the time such bonds were voted to it. In 
politics he has always been a Democrat. He 
has never cared to become prominent in the 
councils of his party, but is a firm believer in 
the righteousness of its principles, and uni- 
formly votes its ticket. No other citizen in 
Winona stands higher in the public esteem 
than John A. Mathews. Considerably more 
than "three score years and ten," he is still 
active and well-preserved, and his situation 
generally is one to be envied in view of his 
public and private record and the history of 
his long and useful life. The happy home of 
Mr. and Mrs. Mathews has always been one 
of the centers of hospitality of the city. They 
have no children. They have, however, reared 
to maturity two daughters of his brother, 
Henry E. Mathews, Jennie C, now Mrs. E. S. 
Gregory, of Winona, Minnesota, and Isabella 
A., now Mrs. E. J. Chamberlain, of Devil's Lake, 
North Dakota. 



WILLIAM LINDEKE. 



The late William Lindeke, of St. Paul, was 
well and widely known in connection with the 
great milling industry of Minnesota. Mr. 
Lindeke was born at Seehausen, near Berlin, 
Prussia, October 1, 1835. The first eighteen 
years of his life were spent in his native coun- 
try, where he obtained a common school educa- 
tion and was afterwards employed by his 
father. But he early felt the need of larger 
opportunities than presented themselves to 
him at home, and resolved to try his fortunes 
in America. He arrived at Montreal in June, 
1854, and made his way directly to Wisconsin, 
in different towns of which State he was em- 
ployed for about three years. In the summer 
of 1857 he went to St. Paul, where he found 
employment in the saw-mill of Pierre Chou- 
teau, Jr.. & Company, then located at the lower 
levee. At the end of a year he secured a trans- 
fer to the neighboring grist-mill, also owned 
by Chouteau & Company, thus becoming 
initiated into the industry in which he was to 
play so important a part. As soon as master 
of the trade, he accepted a position as miller 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



41.3 



with the firm of Gibbons & Marshall, in the old 
Winslow Mills in the lower town; and upon the 
erection by Mr. Marshall of his extensive City 
Mills, Mr. Lindeke was engaged as his head 
miller. In 18G:i Mr. Marshall retired from 
business, and Mr. Lindeke rented the mill and 
continued to operate it as Ins own enterprise. 
A year later he built his fine Union Mill on 
East Fourth street, and from this time on suc- 
cessfully conducted the two establishments. 
Meantime, with acute foresight, he was secur- 
ing, lot by lot, a neighboring tract of land, 
which by 1SSC became surrounded by railroads, 
its value in consequence being greatly en- 
hanced. After rejecting numerous offers of 
the Northern Pacific, he finally sold to that 
company a portion of his property for $150,000. 
This sale included the Union Mills, which he 
reserved the privilege of running until the 
completion of his new steam flouring mill on 
East Seventh and Brook streets. This mill, 
the erection of which was another instance of 
his business acumen, is one of the finest and 
most completely equipped Hour manufactories 
in the Northwest. Mr. Lindeke was also 
prominently identified with the dry-goods busi- 
ness of St. Paul. In 1871 he stocked a retail 
establishment in one of his buildings on Third 
street, and conducted it in partnership with 
his brother, Albert H. Lindeke, who was al- 
ready an expert in the dry-goods trade. The 
firm name adopted by them was A. H. Lindeke 
& Brother, and they carried on the enterprise 
until 1880, then disposed of the business. In 
the meantime — in 1878 — Mr. Lindeke had en- 
gaged in the wholesale dry-goods and notion 
business, together with his brother — Albert 
H. — Reuben Warner and Theodore L. Schur- 
meier, under the style of Lindekes, Warner & 
Schurmeier. Although the enterprise was in- 
augurated during a period of business depres- 
sion, it has developed into one of the most 
extensive and flourishing establishments of the 
kind, not only in St. Paul, but in the entire 
West, its annual sales amounting to five mil- 
lion dollars. Mr. Lindeke was vice-president 
and a heavy stockholder of the National Ger- 
man American Bank of St. Paul. He was also 
a director of the Chamber of Commerce, and 



served on the water-works board of the city. 
He was for three terms a member of the board 
of county commissioners, being chairman of 
the committee on roads and bridges, the com 
mittee on county hospital and committee on 
the poor; and he performed the duties of this 
office with an energy and earnestness possible 
only to the public-spirited and philanthropic 
citizen. February 8, 1861, Mr. Lindeke married 
Miss Rose Braebec, daughter of Simon Braebec, 
of Prague, Austria. Six children were born to 
them, of whom four are now living. Mr. 
Lindeke was a prominent member of the Ger- 
man Evangelical Lutheran St. John's Congre- 
gation of St. Paul, and was one of those 
consistent Christians whose religion finds a 
constant practical application outside the 
church. He remembered that he was once a 
poor hoy, struggling to get a start in the world, 
and he felt a sincere sympathy with honest 
poverty everywhere. Making the less prosper- 
ous of his relatives his first care, his bounty 
overflowed beyond their needs to the relief of 
many whose sole claim upon him was that of 
common humanity; and his image is indelibly 
impressed upon the memories and affections of 
all classes of his surviving fellow-citizens. In 
his wife Mr. Lindeke had a sympathetic as- 
sistant in the dispensing of charities; and since 
his death — which occurred March 9, 1892 — 
Mrs. Lindeke has continued the good work, 
and is a familiar figure in the poorer districts 
of the city, bearing succor to the sick and the 
destitute. 



EDWARD W. DA VIES. 

Productive and interesting has been the 
career of Edward W. Davies, president of the 
Pipestone County Bank, of Minnesota. Mr. 
Davies was born in Shropshire, England, but 
is a thorough American by education and ex- 
perience. His father, John Davies, is a native 
of Wales, born in the year 1830. At the age 
of twenty two he was married to Elizabeth 
Owens, who, also, was of Welsh birth, and 
three years later, on April 5, 1855, the subject 
of this sketch was born. When he was about 
two years old, his parents came with their 



414 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



family to America, making the voyage from 
England to New York City in a sailing vessel. 
From the coast they made their way to London, 
Canada, where they tarried for a short time, 
then crossed to the United States and located 
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. For about a year 
they lived in Milwaukee, then removed to the 
village of Afton, in Rock county, of the same 
State. He remained in Rock county for 
something like ten years, then, in May, 
1SG9, he removed to Minnesota, and located on 
a farm of 1G0 acres in Jackson county. In 
1880 he erected a sung little dwelling in the 
village of Jackson, into which he and his wife 
moved and where they still reside. Of the five 
children born to them, Edward W., the subject 
of this sketch, is the only one living. Edward 
remained with his parents until he was twenty- 
one years of age, and then accepted a clerkship 
in the general store of J. W. Cowing, of Jack- 
son. At the expiration of the year for which 
he had engaged with Mr. Cowing, he secured 
occupation in the county service, and after 
some two years of deputy work in the treas- 
urer's and auditor's offices, he entered a posi- 
tion as manager of one of C. L. Coleman's 
lumber yards. In August, 1879, Mr. Davies 
opened up the Lakefield lumber yard on the 
line of the Milwaukee Railroad, the first in that 
locality, which, in consequence, became the site 
of Lakefield; and it is to him that this 
town owes its name, as well as its first build- 
ing. In the following November Mr. Dayies 
was transferred to Pipestone, to represent Mr. 
Coleman's interests in that city, and became 
one of the pioneer lumber operators of this 
place, also. He opened a lumber yard, erected 
storage buildings, and in the seven years dur- 
ing which he conducted the business at Pipe- 
stone he developed a trade of enormous 
proportions. In 1S8G, together with S. S. King 
and T. A. Black, he established the Jasper 
Journal, a newspaper whose object was to pro- 
mote the interests and welfare of the village 
of Jasper and the environing country. It was 
a Republican organ, although Mr. Davies has, 
for the most part, affiliated with the Demo- 
cratic party. His attitude in politics is but 
little affected by partisan sentiment, as was 



evidenced during the last Presidential cam- 
paign, when he declined to support the Demo- 
cratic ballot because of his disapproval of the 
free silver plank in the platform of his party. 
Since 1887 Mr. Davies has been connected with 
the Pipestone County Bank, as cashier during 
the first four years, and as president for the 
ensuing nine years. He is president, also, of 
the State Bank of Jasper, vice-president of the 
State Bank of Woodstock, Minnesota, and his 
business relations with various strong finan- 
cial institutions of the country have resulted 
with marked profit to himself, as well as to 
others connected with these institutions. Mr. 
Davies was married in January, 1881, to Nellie 
G. King, a daughter of W. V. King, of Jackson 
county, Minnesota. Of the children born to 
them, four are now living, viz.: Kittie A., 
Burr E., Frank E. and Bonnie. 



GEORGE S. RUBLE. 



George S. Ruble, the founder of Albert Lea, 
Freeborn county, Minnesota, was born in 
Kishacoquillas valley, Mifflin county, Pennsyl- 
vania, August 31, 1822. He was the son of 
Henry and Mary E. (Simonds) Ruble, both 
parents being natives of Pennsylvania, railed 
"Pennsylvania Dutch." Peter Ruble, who 
emigrated from Hanover, Germany, in about 
1730 and settled in Mifflin county, Pennsyl- 
vania, was the original ancestor of the Ruble 
family in America. He had four sons, viz.: 
Christian, Peter. Abraham and Mathias; the 
latter settled in the east end of Kishacoquillas 
valley several years prior to the Revolution, 
and he also had four sons, viz.: Peter, Mich- 
ael, John and Henry. The latter married Mary 
E. Simonds, of York county, Pennsylvania, and 
to them were born four sons — Simon, George 
S., the subject of this sketch; Henry and John 
— all natives of the above-named valley. The 
family removed to Wayne county, Ohio, in 
1829, settling on a farm in Green township, 
where the father died a few years later, and 
where the subject of this sketch grew to man- 
hood. He received only a few months school- 
ing, and picked up his education as best he 




The Century Publishing SrOyraviry Co Chicago- 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



415 



could. February 1, 1S49, he married Elethear 
Humphrey, and removed to Rock county, Wis 
cousin, settling on a farm three miles west of 
the city of Byloit, where he engaged iu farm- 
ing and stock raising. In 1855 he sold out his 
interests in Wisconsin, and, accompanied by 
his brother John, removed to Freeborn county, 
Minnesota, where he pre-empted land, put up 
a double log house and prepared to receive his 
family. He then returned to Wisconsin and 
brought out his family in the fall of the same 
year. He built the dam across the Shell Rock 
river, which formed the body of water now 
known as Fountain lake. He commenced the 
building of a saw-mill, which was put in opera- 
tion in the spring of 1857. To this, the follow- 
ing year, he added a grist mill. He laid out 
the village and named it Albert Lea, after Lake 
Albert Lea. near which it is situated. The first 
plat was recorded October 29, 1850, in Dodge 
county, of which it then formed a part. < m 
February 24, 1859, it was duly recorded in the 
register's office of Freeborn county. .Mr. Ruble 
then put up a small building, which was used 
by Swineforth & Gray for a printing office, the 
first in that region, and where they published 
the first newspaper, called the "Southern 
Minnesota Star." Its first issue was July 11, 
1857; it was a Democratic weekly paper, en- 
couraged by the Democratic Central * Jommit- 
tee, through the influence of Mr. Ruble and by 
the credit which he gave it. It was afterwards 
changed to the "Freeborn County Eagle," and 
became a Republican organ under Isaac Bots- 
ford; and still later it became the "Freeborn 
County Standard," under the management of 
Mr. Ruble, associated with Joseph Hooker. 
In the spring of 1860, there came a great flood 
which destroyed the mill property, but it was 
afterwards rebuilt and used for milling pur- 
poses for many years. Mr. Ruble cultivated a 
part of his land as a farm; he sold city lots at 
a small price, or gave them away to encourage 
settlers to locate, and he was always active, 
energetic and persevering in the building up 
of Albert Lea. When the Civil War broke out 
he was among the first to respond to his coun- 
try's call. He raised and became captain of 
Company H, of the First Minnesota Mounted 



Rangers; was mustered in December .">. lstii"; 
spent the winter with his company in barracks 
al Fort Ridgely, and accompanied General 
Sibley in his expedition against the Indians 
across the plains of Dakota in the summer fol- 
lowing. He was mustered out at the expira- 
tion of his term of service, November 24. L8G3. 
In 1864 he re-entered the army as senior tirst 
lieutenant of Company C, First .Minnesota 
Heavy Artillery, and went South with that 
organization. He was commander of the fort, 
on Cameron Hill, at Chattanooga, Tennessee, 
and from there was transferred to Charleston, 
Tennessee, and placed in command of Fort 
Bishop, lie was mustered out of the service 
July 5, 1865, at tin- close of the war, after 
which he returned to Albert Lea. While in 1 he 
South lie had become impressed with the op- 
portunity for business development at Chat- 
tanooga, Tennessee, and decided to locate 
there, which he did in 1866. He opened busi- 
ness in the agricultural implement line, and 
continued for a period of twelve years. He 
moved his family there in 1868, and built a 
house on Lookout Mountain, called -Ruble's 
Cottage Home." This he ran as a hotel for 
twelve years, and it became a famous resort 
well known all over the South for good fare 
and genial hospitality. In 1871 his warehouse, 
with all its contents, was destroyed by tire, en- 
tailing a loss of over $50,000.00. The "Cottage 
Home" was sold in 1881, Captain Ruble having 
returned to Albert Lea in 1880. His health 
began to fail on account of disease contracted 
from exposure while in the army, and he died 
•Inly 2, 1886, and was buried in the family 
burying ground at Beloit, "Wisconsin, where 
his wife, who died February 11, 1892, is also 
buried. In many respects Captain Ruble was 
a remarkable man; of large and powerful 
physique, with a fine and commanding figure; 
he was a man of great force of will, of in- 
domitable energy and perseverance. He 
stood six feet two and one-half inches in height, 
and his weight was 27." pounds, and all his 
brothers were like him — large men. The com- 
bined weight of the four brothers, before the 
war, was 1,265 pounds, and their combined 
height was twenty-tour feel and ten inches. 



416 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



In politics Captain Ruble was a Republican, 
but was not an active partisan. He was ap- 
pointed the first sheriff of Freeborn county. 
He was a charter member of the Western Star 
Lodge of Masons, and was one of the first 
Knights Templar in the State. He left two 
children — Charles X. Ruble, who now occupies 
I he old place in Albert Lea, and Lametta M., 
now the wife of T. 1'. Green, of Shelbyville, 
Tennessee. Another child. Simon, died in in- 
fancy. 



CLARENCE D. ALLEN. 

Clarence Duane Allen, of the law firm of 
Allen & Pattridge, of Spring Valley, and rep- 
resentative of the Fifth District in the Legisla- 
ture of Minnesota, is a native of this State, 
born in Fillmore county. January 11, 1804. He 
is a son of Alonzo B. and Laura M. (Farmer) 
Allen, his maternal grandfather, Hiram F. 
Farmer, having been one of Minnesota's early 
pioneers, who, in 185S, came to settle in this 
State from Lake county, Ohio. The Allen 
family is of English extraction, and traces its 
descent directly from Ethan Allen — one of the 
most conspicuous figures of our Revolution. 
Alonzo B. Allen — father of this subject — was 
a Union soldier of the Civil War. having served 
with Company C of the Third Regiment of 
Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, and surrendered 
up his life for his country while in ad ion at Lit- 
tle Rock. Arkansas. Clarence 1>. Allen obtained 
his general education in the public schools of 
Spring Valley, then took a special course in 
the University of Wisconsin, at Madison, 
graduating from the Law Department of that 
institution with the class of 1887. During the 
same year he was admitted to the bar in the 
United States Circuit Courts, after which he 
entered upon his career as a legal practitioner 
in the town which has since been his home. 
Here he associated himself with J. D. Fanner, 
his uncle on the mother's side; but the partner- 
ship was ended in 1892 by the death of Mr. 
Farmer, after which Mr. Allen practiced by 
himself for some six years. It was in 1898 
that he formed the present firm of Allen & 
Pattridge, of which S. C. Pattridge is junior 



member. The son of a soldier, and born in 
war limes, Mr. Allen has. very naturally, fell 
a lively interest in the military affairs of the 
country. In 1889 he organized the Allen 
Guards — a reserve company of militia — assinn 
ing command as captain. After a time the 
Allen Guards became Company E, Third Regi- 
ment. X. G. M., which, upon the breaking out 
of our late war with Spain, was enrolled as 
Company F, Second Regiment, and despatched 
to the front for active service. Mr. Allen re- 
tained his captaincy for a period of ten years, 
his term of service having expired in January, 
1898. Mr. Allen belongs to a number of secret 
orders, being a Mason, a Knight of Pythias, a 
member of the order of Modern Woodmen, and 
also of the Umited Workmen of America, and 
is a Good Samaritan. On the 26th of June, 
1890, Mr. Allen was united in marriage to Miss 
Florence B. Shutte, of Fort Wayne, Indiana. 
Four children have been born of their union, 
viz.: Bernice, Beatrice, Daniel and Marie, all 
of whom are living. Through his natural abil- 
ities, supplemented by thrift and perseverance, 
Mr. Allen has attained, while still a young man, 
to a substantial and honorable position, and 
his future is bright with possibilities of even 
greater achievement. Throughout his voting 
years he has been an interested and active 
member of the Republican party; and besides 
his political office as a member of the State 
Legislature, to which he was elected in 1898, 
he has done good service during a term of five 
years as city attorney for Spring Valley. 



WILLIAM CONSTANS. 

William Constans, of St. Paul, was born in 
Diemoringen, Alsace Lorraine, France, June 
11', 1829. His parents were Christian and Cath- 
erine (Becker) Constans, both natives of 
France. William's early life was spent on his 
father's farm, and in the common schools of 
his native place. There he was taught both 
the French and German languages, which was 
the custom in that province. When William 
was eighteen years of age, he came with a 
cousin, to the United States, stopping first in 




77i£ Qxituru ■ PuMistuiig kEnutwi'itig Co Chicayo' 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



41/ 



New Orleans, where his cousin settled perma- 
nently. He secured a situation as clerk in a 
hardware store, and remained there until the 
following July, when he went to Cincinnati, 
and there found employment in a toy store. In 
the spring of 1850 he left Cincinnati and came 
hy boat to St. Paul, where he entered the em- 
ploy of Slosson & Douglas, who conducted a 
grocery store, and also a merchant tailor shop, 
the first and only tailoring establishment in 
J3t. Paul at that time. He remained with this 
firm for two years, and then rented a ware- 
house near by and started in business for him- 
self, receiving, storing and forwarding goods. 
This was the first business of the kind estab- 
lished in St. Paul, and from small beginnings 
it soon developed into a general forwarding 
and commission business, large quantities of 
goods being left with him for sale on commis- 
sion. In the fall of 1853 J. C. Burbank joined 
him in the business, and the firm became Con- 
stans & Burbank, forwarding and commission. 
They remained together for one year, when 
Mr. Burbank withdrew from the firm, and Mr. 
Constans continued in the same line alone. His 
business soon became very extensive and was 
profitable up to the time when railroads were 
built; then freighting by water and mule or 
ox teams ceased, and the forwarding business 
declined. He then added wholesale groceries, 
which also developed into a business of large 
extent. During the years of 1872 and 1873 he 
put up a brick building at 272 Jackson street, 
which was the first substantial brick building 
erected in that locality. About this time he 
closed out his other business and opened up 
another line in the new building, that of 
brewers' supplies, the first of the kind in the 
State. This business he conducted until 1890, 
when he sold out to Hauser & Sons, who still 
continue in the same line. Mr. Constans re- 
tired from all active mercantile business and 
gave his time to his private affairs. For many 
years he has made investments in real estate 
in St. Paul and vicinity, and the improvement 
and handling of this property occupied most 
of his time. Mr. Constans was one of the in- 
corporators of the National German American 
Bank, and was also one of the incorporators of 



the State Savings Bank of St. Paul, and has 
been one of the trustees of that bank since its 
formation. He was also one of the directors 
of the Peoples Bank of St. Paul. Mr. Constans 
was one of (he charter members of the Cham- 
ber of Commerce, and is a member of the I 

mercial Club. He has always 1 na Democrat, 

but has never taken an active part in local poli- 
tics or sought or held public office. Mr. Con 
stans was married April 13, lsii7, to Bertha 
Yon Frankenberg, a native of < ieiniany. Tiny 
are the parents of seven children: Annie B., 
William F., Edmond H., Bertha C. (Mrs. W. 
A. Merriam), Ernie, Otto E., and Elsie. 



WILLIAM HODGSON. 

The subject of (his sketch is senior partner 
in the law firm of Hodgson, Crosby & Lowell. 
of Hastings, Minnesota. He is of English 
parentage, his father, Thomas Hodgson, ami 
his mother (whose maiden name was Charlotte 
Currin, and who was a descendant of John 
Philpot Currin, of England), having both emi- 
grated in early life to this country and settled 
in the State of Illinois. William Hodgson was 
born May 20, 1847, in Jo Daviess county, Illi- 
nois. His father followed the farmer's vocu 
tion, and his financial circumstances were 
those of the ordinary fanner of the middle 
West. William grew up upon the home farm, 
and acquired his elementary education in the 
public schools of Weston, Illinois. In IS.").",, 
when eight years of age, he removed with his 
parents to Minnesota, the family locating upon 
a farm in Greenvale, in the southern part of 
Dakota county. Here the boy assisted his 
father in the fields during the summer time, 
continuing his education in the schools of that 
locality in winter. When advanced far enough 
for collegiate work, he entered Hamline Uni- 
versity, then situated at Red Wing. Minnesota, 
and continued as a student in that institution 
until it was removed to its present location. 
In the fall of 1867 Mr. Hodgson began reading 
law in the office and under the direction of 
Judge Phelps, of Red Wing. In July, 1870, he 
gained his admission to the bar of Minnesota, 



4 i8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



and in the following autumn entered upon the 
practice of his profession in the town of Farm- 
ing-ton. His residence in Hastings dates from 
1874, in the fall of which year he came hither 
in search of a permanent location. During the 
years of his practice in this city he has been 
a member in several partnerships, the first 
being with Captain Parliman, formed in ISTti. 
This one was of short duration, and was suc- 
ceeded by a partnership with W. H. Adams, 
entered into, in 1878, and continuing until 1S83. 
Subsequently Mr. Hodgson was for several 
years associated in practice with Albert 
Shaller, their relation being dissolved in 1898, 
when the present firm of Hodgson, Crosby & 
Lowell was organized. Mr. Hodgson is a Re- 
publican, appreciated by his party for his 
fidelity and active influence, and in the public 
offices to which he has been elected he has 
done efficient service. He was mayor of Hast- 
ings during the years 1S82 and 1883, and is 
now serving for the third time in the capacity 
of attorney for Dakota county. Mr. Hodgson 
is a veteran of the Civil War, having enlisted 
as a private in the Union army on December 
2, 1862. He was mustered out December 2, 
1865, and, although he had devoted three full 
years to his country, it chanced that he had 
seen but little active service. Besides being a 
member of the G. A. R., Mr. Hodgson is a 
Royal Arch Mason and an Odd Fellow, and 
belongs to the Independent Order of Foresters. 
He is not a member of any church society. Mr. 
Hodgson has been twice married; the first time 
in 1870, to Miss Drucilla Hutchinson, who was 
a daughter of English parents. After a few 
years she was separated from him by death, 
and in 1885 he was united to Belle M. Powner. 
Mr. Hodgson is the father of four children, viz.: 
Lawrence O, by his first marriage, and Chester 
P., Raymond and Charles E., sons of the pres- 
ent .Mrs. Hodgson. 



JOHN K. WEST. 



John Kingsbury West, of Detroit, Minne- 
sota, is a native of Massachusetts, and was 
born on the 27th of January, 1847.' He was 
reared in the place of his birth — Pittsfield — in 



the heart of the Berkshire Hills. His father, 
John Chapman West, also a native of the Old 
Bay State, was a man of most admirable char- 
acter and ability. He was engaged in mercan- 
tile pursuits in Pittsfield, in one location, for 
fifty-four years. He became intimately identi- 
fied with the public affairs of his town during 
twenty years of continuous service as chair- 
man of the board of selectmen. This term 
included the years of the Civil War, when the 
duties of the office were very arduous. His 
politics were pure and liberal, he being a Demo- 
crat of the old Jeffersonian type. He was also 
an active member of the choir of the historic 
First Church of Christ of Pittsfield for a full 
half century. The maiden name of his wife — 
mother of the subject of this biography — was 
Maria L., daughter of Butler Goodrich, of 
rittsfield. John Kingsbury West attended the 
schools of his native town until his fifteenth 
year, after which he pursued a higher course 
of study at a boarding school in Lanesboro, 
Massachusetts. In 18G3 he entered the middle 
class of Williston Seminary at East Hampton, 
Massachusetts. After leaving this institution 
he entered the freshman class of Williams Col- 
lege, and taking a four-years' course, graduated 
in ISfiS. He then went into business as a 
manufacturer of woolen goods, which industry 
he followed for a period of twelve years, oper- 
ating factories in the three Massachusetts 
towns of Pittsfield, Dalton and Chester. Upon 
coming west he located in the then diminutive 
village of Detroit, which by his labor and en- 
terprise he has helped develop to its present 
status. During the first three years or so of 
his residence in the place, he followed the lum- 
ber business, but since 1S84 he has been con- 
tinuously operating in real estate, insurance 
and loans on real securities. In politics he at 
present affiliates with the Republican party. 
On October 20, 1875, he was married to Miss 
Jessie, daughter of George Campbell, of Pitts- 
field. An interesting fact in the family history 
of Mr. West is, that his two great-grandfathers 
were arrayed against each oilier in the Revolu- 
tionary War, the maternal ancestor serving as 
a British soldier, and the paternal ancestor as 
an American patriot. 




Ih& Century Publishing i Oymiiny Co Chicaner 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



410 



EDWARD W. RICHTER. 

Edward Willard Richter, a prominent at- 
torney and citizen of Owatonna, is of German- 
Irish parentage, his father, Ferdinand Richter, 
having been a native and professor of lan- 
guages of Hamburg, Germany, while his 
mother, whose maiden name was Catherine 
Keilly, was born and spent her early years in 
the city of Dublin, Ireland. They emigrated to 
this country in the year 184!), and became 
pioneer settlers in Waushara county, Wiscon- 
sin, the survey of that State not having been 
completed by the Government at the time 
Professor Richter took up his claim. Here, on 
the virgin soil of his father's farm, Edward \Y. 
was born and reared, the date of his birth hav- 
ing been March 31, 1851. Tie was the oldest 
son in a large family of children, and responsi- 
bility early devolved upon him as such, which 
curtailed somewhat the education ambitiously 
planned. As a hoy he assisted his father with 
the farm work in summer, attending the school 
of his home district in winter. At sixteen he 
became a student at Ripon College, and con- 
tinued his studies there for a year, though 
during a portion of the time he found it neces- 
sary to walk to and from the college — a matter 
of eight miles a day. Later on he pursued his 
studies at St. Francis' Seminary, near Milwau- 
kee; hut was compelled by lack of funds to 
abandon his course uncompleted at the end of 
two years. The mental training he had ac- 
quired, however, proved immediately valuable, 
and for some years, in the alternating capaci- 
ties of school teacher and farmer, he aided in 
the support of the family at home. Eventually 
his father decided to leave the Wisconsin farm 
and locate anew in Minnesota; but he was 
scarcely more than settled in the new home in 
Dodge county when he met his death by an 
accident while employed in a lumber camp in 
the northern part of that State. This was in 
1872, when Edward W. was twenty-one years 
of age; and with his majority there came to 
him, also, the full responsibility of the head of 
the family. He settled up his father's affairs, 
ami for five years devoted himself to the main- 
tenance of the home, liv this time others of 



the children had grown sufficiently mature and 
competent to relieve him, and, deciding upon 
the law for his future career, he associated 
himself as a student with the Hon. (\ ( '. Will 
son, of Rochester. Subsequently he continued 
his studies with the firm of Start & Dove, of 
the same city. Upon the completion of his 
preparation for practical work, he located in 
Owatonna, where he has since resided and 

practiced his profession. Mr. Richter has 1 n 

a member of one law partnership only, which 
he formed, early in the eighties, with Hon. 
Amos Coggswell, and which continued for 
about one year. Politically, Mr. Richter is a 
Republican, and has always shown much in- 
terest in public affairs. For three years In- 
filled the office of city attorney of Owatonna; 
also served as county attorney during the two 
terms included in the years 1895-99. In re- 
ligion he has been a life-long adherent to the 
Roman Catholic faith. In the month of Sep- 
tember, 1891, Mr. Richter was married to Miss 
J. O'Connor, of Owatonna. Four children — 
two sons and two daughters — have been born 
to them, of whom the three now living are 
named, respectively, Edward M., Mary and 
Nellie. 



ODIN HALDEN. 

Odin Haldeu, auditor of St. Louis county. 
and for nearly twenty years a resident of 
Duluth, was born in Norway on the 6th of 
May. 1S(>12. His father was also a native Nor- 
wegian, and the father of six children, all of 
whom are living. The subject of this bi- 
ography was reared in the rugged home 
country, and educated in its public schools. 
'Ambitious, however, for larger business op- 
portunities than were open to him in the 
fatherland, he came, at the age of nineteen, to 
this country, locating in Grove City. Mimic 
sola. Possessing hut small means, and no in- 
fluence, he was obliged to work his way up 
from humble beginnings. He soon secured 
occupation on a farm in the outskirts of the 
town, for which he was paid eighteen dollars 
per month. After about a year — in 1NS2 — he 



420 



biography of Minnesota. 



l.-f i Grove City for Wilmar, Minnesota, where 
he procured another fanning position. In this 
one his duties included the care of the stock 
—milking the cows, caring for the horses, etc. 
Hi' slaved but a short time on the Wilmar 
farm, for it was in the spring of 1882 that he 
came to Duluth, which city he decided to make 
his permanent location. Here his farming ex- 
perience could serve him but little, and he was 
compelled si ill for awhile to content himself 
with undesirable work and small wages. First 
finding employment at the docks, he later en- 
gaged with a force of lumbermen and worked 
for a short time in the woods, and after this 
became a sub-contractor and employe of the 
Duluth & Iron Railroad. In the fall of iss:i 
Mr. llalden entered upon what proved to be 
a somewhat lengthy career in a line of busi- 
ness quite different from any of his former 
occupations. He accepted a clerical position 
in one of the grocery stores of Duluth. in which 
he worked as an employe for about a year 
and a half, laying by in the meantime a suffi- 
cient amount of money to venture into business 
for himself. Finding his employer willing to 
dispose of the business, he purchased it. and 
during the next seven years was the proprietor 
of this retail grocery store. In politics Mr. 
llalden is loyally Republican, having cast his 
first vote for President Garfield, and he enters 
with enthusiasm into all the interests of his 
party. Mr. Halden was first made deputy 
auditor of St. Louis county, and after doing 
duty in that secondary capacity for something 
like six years, he was elected to the office of 
Auditor, in which he has now completed his 
I bird term of service. In 1891, -Mr. Halden was 
married to .Miss Jennie Hanson, of La Crosse, 
Wisconsin. After a very short period of 
wedded happiness, however, he was bereft of 
his wife by death, and he has since remained 
single. Mr. llalden is a member of the Luth- 
eran church. 



BARLOW II. BONNIVILLE. 

Harlow Horace Bonniville, Esq., of Hutchi- 
son, Minnesota, was horn at Nequon, Ozaukee 
county. Wisconsin. May 13, L860. He is a son 



and the only surviving child of William T. 
Bonniville, who in the spring of 1866 settled 
with his family in Hutchison, and followed the 
joint industry of farming and milling in this 
State until compelled by failing health to retire 
from strenuous business pursuits. The senior 
Bonniville was a man whose strict rectitude of 
character made him cherished as a citizen, and 
his loss by death in 1891 was deeply regretted 
in the community. The subject of this sketch 
was fundamentally educated in the public; 
schools of Hutchison. At the age of eighteen 
he became a student in the University of 
Minnesota, and, taking a three-years' course, 
graduated with the class of 1881. In connec- 
tion with his first year of college work he read 
law in the office of Gilfillan & Lochren, at 
Minneapolis, and he subsequently continued 
his legal studies under the direction of Hon. 
C. J. Smith, of the same city, with whom he 
was associated for a year and a half. In the 
fall of 1881 he entered the Law Department 
of the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor, 
and two years later received his degree at that 
institution. In the year 1887 he opened an 
office at Hutchison for the practice of his pro- 
fession, in which he has since been continu- 
ously occupied. He has been very successful, 
particularly in the department of criminal law, 
which he has to some extent made a specialty. 
In conducting a case, he marshals his forces 
of facts and arguments with the skill and 
effectiveness of an able general in battle, and 
to those who witness these legal contests it is 
no marvel that he is so frequently the victor. 
Mr. Bonniville has been a life-long Democrat, 
and is counted a stalwart of his party, in whose 
political campaigns he has been a zealous par- 
ticipant. He is the present Democratic chair- 
man of the Third Congressional District of 
Minnesota, and in his early prime enjoys a 
reputation, both professional and political, 
which extends throughout McLeod county, 
and. indeed, the entire State. He has not 
sought political preferment, being well con- 
tent with his legal work, in which he has main- 
tained an unswerving integrity. He has given 
his services to many an impecunious client, 
whose gratitude was his only reward; and in 




The Ovitury Puttistmu/ A Cru/imiity Co Clucaytr 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



4-21 



the more favored circles of society he has 
many friends who are indebted to him for the 
pleasures afforded by his rare social qualities. 
He is a member of the Masonic order, and 
belongs, also, to the United Workmen of 
America. On April 25, L884, .Mr. Bonniville 
was married to Miss Mary Frankinsid, of Hen- 
derson, Minnesota. Mr. and Mrs. Bonniville 
have two children. 



FRANK M. NYE. 



Frank Mellen Nye, of Minneapolis, was born 
March 7. 1852, at Shirley, .Maine. His parents 
— Franklin and Eliza M. (Loring) Nye — were 
also natives of the "Pine-tree State," where 
his father followed the lumber industry until 
1853. In that year the family removed to Wis- 
consin, settling upon a farm near the town of 
River Falls. Here Frank M. Nye spent his 
early years, attending the common schools, and 
subsequently the academy, of River Falls. 
Choosing the legal profession as a congenial 
field of labor, he promptly set about acquiring 
it. Like many other ambitious young men. he 
found himself handicapped by insufficient 
means, and earned his way to the bar by teach- 
ing school during several terms. He was ad- 
mitted to the bar at Hudson, Wisconsin, in 
the year 1S78, but decided to locate in Polk 
county, whither he went and opened an office 
for professional practice. He remained in Polk 
county for five or six years, meantime being 
drawn to some extent into public functions. 
He served as district attorney for two terms, 
and in the fall of 1S84 was elected as a Repre- 
sentative from tlie county to the State Legis- 
lature. Early in 1886 he changed his location 
to Minneapolis, where he lias since resided, and 
in which larger held his abilities won prompt 
recognition. He entered into political affairs 
with an enthusiasm which was made doubly 
effective by his natural gift for public spoa ic- 
ing; and upon the election of Robert Jamison 
to the position of county attorney, Mr. Nye 
received from him the appointment as assis- 
tant. In 1S02 Mr. Nye was himself elected 
count v attornev. and two years later was re- 



elected to the same office. Mr. Nye's profes- 
sional career lias been one of marked success, 
particularly in the line of criminal law. wind, 
department lias claimed the greater share of 
his attention; and his reputation has been ex- 
tended beyond the limits of his own State by 
his skill in conducting the prosecution of im- 
portant cases. In the celebrated Hayward 
case, also in that of the Harris murderers, be 
was prosecuting attorney and secured convic- 
tion of the defendants, in the latter case under 
extraordinary difficulties. Mr. Nye's services 
have been called into requisition in distant 
courts, the trial of Myron Kent for wife mur- 
der in North Dakota being an instance in which 
he was retained by that State with successful 
result. In the civil causes of his home county, 
also, he has done important and appreciated 
work, and has been solicited to accept advance- 
ment in the public service; but he remains 
contentedly absorbed in his professional work, 
seemingly indifferent to preferment. In 1876 
Mr. Nye was married to Carrie M. Wilson, of 
River Falls, Wisconsin. Six children have been 
born to them, of whom four are now living, as 
follows: Belle Agnes, wife of A. B. Carter; 
Iva Dell, Edgar W. and Frances Marie. In 
politics Mr. Nye has always been a Republican. 
and in late campaigns has done very effective 
work upon the stump in his own and neigh- 
boring States. 



WILLIAM W. PENDERGAST. 

William Wirt Pendergast, of Hutchinson, 
president of the Minnesota State Horticultural 
Society and ex-superintendent of Public In- 
struction of this State, was born January 31, 
is:;:;, at Packers Falls, Durham, New Hamp- 
shire. His parents were Solomon and Lydia 
(Wiggin) Pendergast, and he is descended, 
through three intervening generations, of New 
Englanders, from Stephen Pendergast, who, in 
1673, came from Wexford, Ireland, to the then 
infant settlement of Durham. He built a gar- 
rison house at Packers Falls, which became 
the birthplace of the line of Pendergasts above 



-P- 



p.Tor.RArnY of Minnesota. 



referred to, including the subject of this sketch. 
The wife of tin' pioneer ancestor was. before 
marriage, Jam' Cotton, and was related to John 
Cotton, of historic fame; and Edmond Pender- 
gast, Jr.. grandfather of William W., was a 
soldier of the Revolution who participated in 
the capture of Burgoyne. William grew up on 
the home farm, attending the nearest district 
school. He was one of a large family of chil- 
dren, and although his father was a man of 
academic education, his financial resources 
were restricted, which made it necessary for 
William to earn the means for his preparatory 
and collegiate courses. This he accomplished 
by intervals of school teaching. He graduated 
from the academy at Durham in 1850, and in 
the same year entered Bowdoin College, where 
he was a classmate of ex-Senator W. D. Wash 
burn, of Minnesota. Like most students who 
pay their way through college, young Pender- 
gast studied hard and to good purpose; but 
outside the prescribed routine, his super- 
abundant vitality sometimes found expression 
in activities which are as certainly a part of 
the collegiate programme, although conducted 
under the auspices of frisky students and but 
sparingly appreciated by the more sedate 
faculty. His period of college life was followed 
by three years of teaching in Massachusetts 
graded schools — one year in Amesbury and 
two ill Essex — during which time he gained 
good experience as an educator, and an en- 
viable reputation as well. In the spring of 
1856, Mr. Pendergasl came to Minnesota, took 
up a claim in MoLeod county, and, together 
with the Hutchinson family, whom he had 
dissuaded from their contemplated location in 
Kansas, became a pioneer of the now thrifty 
i own of Hutchinson. Mr. Pendergasl built the 
first school house in Hutchinson, and taught 
I he young people of the little village until his 
building was destroyed by the Indians in the 
Sioux massacre of 1862. During this outbreak 
many of 1 he inhabitants of Hutchinson suffered 
heavy losses of property. Their lives were 
rendered secure, however, by Mr. Pendergast's 
foresight in organizing a military company of 
the men, who built a fort and thus defended 
themselves and their families without help 



from the United Stales army. Shortly after 
this crucial experience our subject moved back 
to New England, and remained East for three 
years, during which he filled the position 
of principal of the high school at Amesbury, 
Massachusetts. In IStiti, after his return to 
Hutchinson, he became principal of its new 
pnblic school, and labored as such for some 
fifteen years, meantime serving for eight years 
as county superintendent of schools. In 1881 
he was appointed assistant superintendent of 
public instruction, which position he filled for 
seven years. Upon the organization, in 1S8S, 
of a School of Agriculture as a department of 
the State University. Mr. Pendergast was ap- 
pointed principal. This post he resigned in 
September, 1893, to accept that of State 
Superintendent of Public Instruction. After 
five years and more of efficient work as the 
educational head of the State, and feeling the 
need of the retirement of home life. Superin- 
tendent Pendergast announced his disinclina- 
tion for further appointment, upon which he 
was almost immediately elected to his present 
position as president of the Minnesota State 
Horticultural Society. Professor Pendergast 
affiliates with the Republican party, but his 
politics are not of the partisan type. He is 
an educator in the best sense of the word — 
not merely by profession, but by instinct and 
principle. He feels a profound concern for the 
intellectual growth of the people, and, as such 
an educator, he has developed a universality 
of sympathy wholly inconsistent with the par- 
tisan spirit, which, whether in the political or 
other realms, is always allied to narrowness 
of vision and bias of judgment. He is a Mason, 
having, in 1866, become the First Worshipful 
Master of Temple No. 49, in Hutchinson. On 
the 9th of August, 1857, Mr. Pendergast was 
married to Abbie L. Cogswell, of Essex, Massa- 
chusetts, with whom he had become acquainted 
during his early teaching days. The wedding 
was celebrated at Essex, in the home of the 
bride, which was also her birthplace. Nine 
children have been born to Professor and Mrs. 
Pendergasl. the six of whom now living are: 
Elizabeth C, Edmond K„ Mary A., Perley P., 
Sophie M., and Ellen M. 




The (biituty Pulitishuig & Enymuiitj Co Cliicapv 




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Tha dthuy PtMislmy icEnyravmg Co Clucayo- 



^£rtc^<uj C$. VOAjuvjtiA/. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



423 



HENRY W. BREWSTER. 

Henry Webb Brewster, Principal of the 
School of Agriculture and Professor of 
Mathematics in the College of Agriculture, of 
the University of Minnesota, was born on a 
farm near New Lisbon. Wisconsin, June 19, 
1853. His father was John Brewster, a de- 
scendant of the Brewsters of early New Eng- 
land history. He emigrated to Wisconsin in 
1852, and became a prosperous farmer and a 
prominent man of local affairs. The mother 
of our subject was Charlotte Rhines, a native 
of Schoharie county, New York. Her ances- 
tors were also early settlers of New England. 
Members of the family on both the father and 
mother's side were patriot soldiers in the War 
of Independence. Henry was the fifth of a 
family of six children. His oldest brother died 
a soldier in the Civil War. All the rest have 
been school teachers, and all are living except 
one sister. His early education was procured 
at the district school while living on the farm, 
working summers and teaching school winters. 
When Henry was twenty years old the home 
farm was sold and the family moved into the 
village of New Lisbon. He then attended the 
State Normal School at Whitewater, Wiscon- 
sin, and graduated from the elementary course 
in 1875. After this he taught graded schools 
in Wisconsin and Minnesota until 1885, when 
he entered the University of Minnesota as a 
student, and graduated from the classical 
course with the degree of A. B. in the summer 
of 1887. He then taught the high school at 
Little Falls, Minnesota, for one year. October 
18, 1888, the State School of Agriculture was 
opened and Mr. Brewster was made assistant 
principal, which position he held for five years, 
when the principal, Professor Pendergast, re- 
signed and Mr. Brewster was made principal. 
This position lie has ably tilled since that time. 
Mr. Brewster is a man of broad practical ideas, 
original and thorough in his work. He keeps 
himself in close touch with the student and 
the farmer, and this trait has contributed much 
to the success of the school. He has made a 
careful study of what would benefit and be 
helpful to the student. He makes himself the 



student's friend, and knows (hem all indi- 
vidually. Besides his professional duties he 
has found lime to write many essays on educa 
tional subjects, some of which have been pub- 
lished and have attracted marked attention. 
In 1803 he wrote a thesis for die degree of 
rh. D., which was conferred on him the pre- 
vious year. This thesis was published by the 
University, entitled "Sensation and Intellec- 
tion; their character and their functions in the 
cognition of the Heal and the Ideal." In 1891 
Dr. Brewster was chairman of the committee 
on spelling reform at the meeting of the 
National Educational Association at Toronto, 
Canada. Dr. Brewster was married September 
11, 1880, to Florence A. Leach, daughter of 
C. E. Leach, a prominent business man of New 
Lisbon, Wisconsin. She has been of great help 
to her husband in his work; acting for some 
years as matron of the School of Agriculture, 
her hand has done much to shape the home 
life of the institution. She made a special sub- 
ject of cheering and helping the sick student, 
acting often in the capacity of nurse and 
mother. She resigned as matron in 1892, and 
since that time has been librarian, but the 
students still look up to and appeal to her as 
a mother and friend. Together Dr. and Mrs. 
Brewster have followed the practice of giving 
each class in the school a reception at the be- 
ginning of the school year, and have also en 
couraged and assisted them to give, later in 
the year, receptions of their own. The social 
value of these gatherings, together with Mrs. 
Brewster's constant personal work, have made 
her influence and value of great weight to the 
entire student body. 



KNUTE NELSON. 



Hon. Knute Nelson, United States Senator 
from Minnesota, and ex-Governor of the State, 
was born at Yoss, Norway, February 2, 1843. 
His life has been an exceptionally eventful 
one, and furnishes material worthy of more 
comprehensive and dramatic treatment than 
the scope of this work permits. We can but 
sketch it in outline, leaving it to be filled in 



424 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



by the imagination of the reader. The home 
of his birth and earliest years was located in 
a rugged, picturesque snot on the western 
coast of Norway, near the city of Bergen. Here 
his ancestors, a thrifty agricultural people, 
had dwelt and toiled for generations. < >f this 
home, however, our subject can have retained 
lint a shadowy remembrance, his mother hav- 
ing brought him to this country when lie was 
only six years of age. His father had died 
three years earlier, happily for the child before 
he had come lo realize and depend upon the 
paternal love and guidance, of which 
he would he henceforth bereft". Crossing 
to America, mother and son made their 
way to Chicago, arriving, as it chanced, 
at a most unfortunate time. It was mid- 
summer of the year 1849, when the epi- 
demic of cholera was devastating the city. 
Little Knute fell a victim to the dread disease, 
hut his constitution, hardy with the invigorat- 
ing breezes of his native hills, withstood its 
ravages. In the autumn of 1850 his mother 
removed with him to Walworth county, Wis- 
consin, and thence in a short time to Dane 
county, where she made her home and where 
Knute grew up. The restricted means of Mrs. 
Nelson made the education of her boy a 
problem — a problem, however, which was half 
solved by his aptness and ambition. There are 
few boys who have an earnest desire and de- 
termination to become educated but will find 
the means to that end; and often their educa- 
tion is a better one, containing a larger element 
of the practical knowledge which results from 
broad thought and observation, than that of 
the more pecunious and thoroughly schooled 
youth. After wrestling with many obstacles, 
Knute was able, at the age of fifteen, to enter 
Albion Academy; but three years later, and 
before the end of his course, the Rebellion 
came on, and young Nelson, together with 
several of his fellow-students, abandoned his 
hooks and took up arms for his country, en- 
listing in the Fourth Wisconsin Infantry. 
This was in May, 1861, and he served with his 
regiment, as a private and non-commissioned 
officer, until the autumn of 1804, and during 
those years saw all the hardships, perils and 



horrors of civil warfare. He assisted at the 
capture of New Orleans, participated in the 
siege of Vicksburg, fought at Baton Rouge and 
('amp Bisland; was also one of the besieging 
force at Port Hudson. Louisiana, in 18('>:'>, and 
in the famous charge of June 14, he was 
wounded, captured and retained as a prisoner, 
beinji released June !). on which date the fort 
surrendered. When the war was over, Mr. 
Nelson returned to Wisconsin and completed 
his academic course at Albion. Soon after 
graduating he began reading law in the office 
of Senator William F. Vilas, at Madison, Wis- 
consin, and in the spring of 1867 was admitted 
to the bar. He commenced practice without 
delay, and soon gained a foothold in the pro- 
fession, as also in public affairs, lie served 
as a member of the State Assembly during 
the terms of 1868 and 1869, being honored with 
a re-election to that body. Upon the expira- 
tion of his second term he came to Minnesota, 
locating in Douglas county. In this region he 
naturally felt a home atmosphere, for the pop- 
ulation of Douglas county, and. indeed, of the 
whole northwestern section of the State con- 
tained a large constituency of Norwegian and 
Swedish people. He selected a tract of land 
within a United States homestead, and in the 
outskirts of Alexandria, and, laying out a farm, 
entered upon the double role of farmer and 
attorney-at law. Nature had designed him 
for a leader, and he soon found his place in the 
vanguard of local affairs. He was inspired by 
a double patriotism, and labored at once to 
promote the welfare of his fellow-countrymen 
and that of the State where he and they had 
cast their lot. From 1872 to 1874, inclusive, 
he served as county attorney for Douglas coun- 
ty, and from 1875 to 1878, inclusive, as State 
Senator from the Thirty-ninth Legislative Mis 
trict. His influence and popularity grew apace, 
and in the Presidential campaign of 1880 his 
name appeared on the Garfield electoral ticket. 
From February 1, 1882, to January 1. 1893, In- 
served the Stale University as a member of its 
board of regents. In 1882 the Republicans of 
the then Fifth Congressional District of Min- 
nesota nominated Mr. Nelson for Congress, and 
after an exceedingly fierce contest his election 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



425 



was secured by a plurality of 4,500 votes. In 
1884 he was re-elected, this time by a plurality 
of above 10,000 votes, and in 1886 ran success- 
fully for a third term, receiving a ballot of 
43,937, as against 1,230 votes cast for his single 
antagonist, a Prohibition candidate. In Con- 
gress, Mr. Nelson's attitude was aggressive and 
self-reliant, and made him respected as a strong 
and progressive member, even by those whose 
views differed from his. Largely through his 
instrumentality, bills wore passed to open up 
reservations, which definitely solved the Indian 
problem in Minnesota. As an enthusiastic ad- 
vocate of tariff reform, he was the author of a 
measure which contemplated the complete 
abolition of the tariff on various articles; aud 
he even exerted his influence to secure the pas- 
sage of the Mills bill. Radical though he was, 
however, he inspired the general confidence, 
and his re-nomination in 1888 was regarded as 
a foregone conclusion. But he declined to run 
for a fourth term, and on the expiration of his 
duties at Washington he returned to Alexan- 
dria and resumed his private legal practice and 
his farming. So retired a life was not long to 
be permitted him, however. The public had 
tested his official work and demanded its con- 
tinuance. In 1892, his party unanimously nom- 
inated him for Governor of Minnesota, and his 
election duly followed, by a plurality of 14,020 
votes. Two years later, a plurality of 00,000 
emphasized his re-election, but a still higher 
honor awaited him. His second term as Gov- 
ernor had scarcely begun when he was elected 
United States Senator, and he resigned the 
lesser office to enter the greater, in which he 
is still serving in a manner which redounds to 
his credit and the good of his country. His 
term of office will expire in March, 1001. Mr. 
Nelson's experience corroborates the familiar 
saying, that "there is always room at the top." 
He is made of the stuff that is needed in the 
high places of the earth, and is drawn as by 
unseen forces, even from the depths of poverty 
and obscurity, to fill such places. There is not 
only an opportunity in America for young men 
of the stamina of Knute Nelson — there is an 
imperative demand for them. Mr. Nelson is 
married and has two children — one son and 



one daughter. His mother is still living in 
Wisconsin. His public successes enable him to 
choose his friends from among the foremost, 
and give him free entre to the most select so- 
cial circles. 



MAHLON N. GILBERT. 
(BY REV. C. A. POOLE.) 

Bishop Mahlon Norris Gilbert was the 
younger son of Norris Gilbert and Lucy Todd. 
The Gilbert family were of Connecticut stock, 
and were represented in the Continental Army 
during the war of the American Revolution. 
Norris Gilbert removed to New Y~ork and set- 
tled first at Laurens, in Otsego county. There, 
in the year 184S, on the 23rd of March, was 
born the subject of this sketch. Six years later 
the family removed to Morris, in the same 
county, and on a beautifully located farm in 
the Butternut valley, took up their permanent 
abode. Here the boy. Mahlon. grew up under 
most wholesome influences of family, school 
and church. His father was for many years 
warden of Zion Episcopal church. His grand- 
father and grandmother had been church folk-, 
and were confirmed by Bishop Griswold, of 
Connecticut. When Mahlon was fourteen, the 
Rev. Daniel Sylvester Tattle became the rector 
of Zion church. And it is probable that this 
event had much to do with shaping the future 
career of young Gilbert. He was educated in 
the school house near his father's farm, and at 
Fairfield Seminary, entering Hobart College in 
the class of 1870. At college he was distin 
guished for his warm comradeship. Ill health 
compelled him to abandon his college course 
and seek a milder clime, after the conclusion of 
his sophomore year. He decided to go south, 
and passed the next two years as a private 
tutor in Florida. The writer of this first saw 
Gilbert after his Florida experience; from 
which time began an acquaintance which ri- 
pened later, in seminary days, and in the work 
of the ministry, into the warmest friendship, 
and it is a pleasure to bear record that his loy- 
alty and devotion to his friends was unwaver- 
ing and steadfast. Gilbert was then about to 



426 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



take a position under bis old rector, who had 
become Bishop of Utah, Montana and Idaho, 
at Ogden, as principal of the second Gentile 
school established in Utah. Thus a remark of 
Mr. Tattle, when he was made Bishop, "You 
will come out and work with me some day." 
was fulfilled. And here were renewed the cor- 
dial and fraternal relations between ltishop 
Tuttle and Mahlon Gilbert which bound them 
to each other till death came to terminate one 
part of the compact. In the autumn of 1872, 
Mr. Gilbert became a student at Seabury Di- 
vinity School. Faribault — his health being so 
much restored that he felt equal to the work, 
if he could remain in the West where the cli- 
mate left him free from bis old complaint, 
weakness of the lungs. Ho was graduated from 
the Divinity School in 1875, and after a visit 
to his parents in Morris, returned to take 
charge of a mission at Deer Lodge, Montana. 
Bishop Tuttle said to him. "I have put you in 
the hardest field I have.'' The life here was a 
lonely one. and yet it had its pleasant features. 
It was a mining town, and the hall in which 
services were held was within earshot* of 
the noise and revelry of the dance hall and the 
gambling house, which paid no regard to the 
functions of the church. Yet these same rough 
miners opened their "jackpots" to contribute 
one hundred dollars for the parson's vacation. 
In Deer Lodge the Rev. Mr. Gilbert erected a 
stone church at a cost of $5,000, the money be- 
ing raised partly by subscription from the 
miners and partly by a genuine sale of articles 
contributed by the ladies. The last $2,000 not 
being in sight, the church completed, and the 
treasury empty, in order that the workmen 
might lie promptly paid, Mr. Gilbert went to 
the bank and asked for a loan of $2,000 on his 
personal note, and without endorsement. The 
banker thought a moment and said, "You can 
have it." "How much interest will you charge 
me?" said Gilbert. "Not a cent," said the 
banker. "A man who has the grit to ask for 
$2,000 without au endorser, and for an indefi- 
nite period, can have it without interest." In 
less than a year the note was paid. After 
three years' residence in Deer Lodge, Rev. Mr. 
Gilbert was called to Helena, and he accepted 



the rectorship of St. Peter's church at that 
place. There, also, he erected a new stone 
church, at a cost of $1,200. Part of the church 
people lived on the east side, and part on the 
west side of the gulch which ran through the 
town. They could not decide on which side 
to put the church. Mr. Gilbert made it a con- 
dition of accepting the call that they should 
settle where the church was to be. The east 
side was fixed upon, and the westerners gave 
nothing to building the church, but paid to- 
wards the salary of the rector. W* hi 1<* Key. 
Mr. Gilbert was rector of the church at He- 
lena he was married to Miss Fanny Pierpont 
Carvill, a charming young lady of Faribault, 
Minnesota, whom he had met and courted while 
a student at the seminary. Her father was 
George G. Carvill, of English descent, and a 
native of New York. He was a man of sterling 
integrity. Retiring from active business, he 
moved to Faribault at an early day and died 
there. Her mother was Ann Augusta Brown, 
a lineal descendant of Major Hackahiah 
Brown, of Westchester, who took an active 
part in the Colonial wars, and was himself 
descended from Sir Anthony Brown, who was 
knighted at the coronation of Richard II. Miss 
I arvill completed her school days at St. Mary's 
Hall, under the regime of Miss Sarah Darling- 
ton. Her father and mother were both dead, 
and she was living with an aunt in Philadel- 
phia when her marriage to Rev. Mr. Gilbert 
was celebrated. The ceremony took place in 
Holy Divinity church, Philadelphia, and was 
performed by Rev. C. A. Poole, an old friend 
of both bride and groom, now professor in Sea- 
bury Divinity School. The Rev. Mr. Gilbert 
became rector of the church in Helena in July, 
1S7S. He received an invitation to the rector- 
ship of St. Mark's, Minneapolis, two years later, 
but felt obliged to decline the honor, as his 
work in Helena was not done. In November, 
1880, another call from Minnesota came. This 
lime from the vestry of Christ church, St. Paul. 
This invitation he felt he could accept without 
harm to the work of building in Helena, and 
in January, 1881, Rev. Mr. Gilbert and his wife 
took up their residence in St. Paul. Christ 
church needed just the vigorous and inspiring 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



427 



leadership of such a rector as the congregation 
soon found in Mr. Gilbert. Full of zeal for all 
good works, and wise in his leading, he very 
soon won the confidence and warm friendship 
of the people of his Hock. Here, in 1883, he 
built a rectory next the church, costing $7,500. 
In 1885, a mission church was erected, corner 
of View and Randolph streets, at a cost of 
$2,500. About this time Mr. Gilbert was given 
an assistant to aid in carrying on the rapidly 
growing work of the parish. He was fortunate 
in securing the Rev. S. G. Jeffords, a graduate 
of Seabury. A mission was started at Merriam 
Park, and in 18S0 the corner stone of a church 
at that place was laid. On the 10th of June, 
1886, in Gethsemane church, Minneapolis, (lie 
successful rector of Christ church, SI. Paul, 
was elected as assistant Bishop of the church 
in the Diocese of Minnesota. Up lo this time 
he had taken a leading part in the church 
council and in the missionary work of the dio- 
cese. The Council made no mistake in its se- 
lection of one to ease the increasing burdens 
of the senior Bishop, as fourteen years of ardu- 
ous labor in the Episcopal office have 
abundantly shown. The Bishop-elect was con- 
secrated in St. James' church, Chicago, Octo- 
ber 17. 1886, the eleventh anniversary of his 
ordination to the priesthood, which took place 
at Deer Lodge, at the hands of Bishop Tuttle. 
He had been made deacon in June, 1875, by 
Bishop Whipple, whom he was now to assist 
in the more responsible work of the Episco- 
pate. Nine bishops of the church took part in 
the consecration, viz.: Iowa, Minnesota, West 
ern New York, Albany, Missouri, Montana, 
Indiana, New York, Central Pennsylvania; or 
to give the names of the bishops: Lee, Whip- 
ple, Coxe, Doane, Tuttle, Potter, Knickerbock- 
er, Ralison and Brewer. In 1888, a number 
of Bishop Gilbert's friends and admirers in SI. 
Paul presented him the handsome sum of sill. 
000, with the purpose of providing him a home. 
He became permanently a resident of St. Paul, 
at No. 18 Summit court. During the nearly 
fourteen years of his Episcopal labors, Bishop 
Gilbert maintained his record as the foremost 
missionary in his diocese. Among the Indians, 
in the sparsely settled counties of the State, lie 



gave new impetus lo the work of the church. 
To him belongs very largely the credit of pro- 
moting and fostering the effort to save from 
hopeless division the very large number of 
Swedish Episcopalians who have settled in 
Minnesota, by affiliating them with the church 
of the English people, an effort which has been 
eminently successful. Bishop Gilbert's life 
and energies have been entwined with all the 
important interests of the Diocese of Minne- 
sota. No part of its work but has felt the pow- 
er of his courage, the inspiration of his hope- 
fulness, the sympathy of his large-hearted and 
watchful interest. The church schools at Fari- 
bault, founded by the great Bishop Whipple, 
have been cherished and strengthened by the 
loving care and counsel of Bishop Gilbert. At 
the same time he has shown an interest, and 
often from the help of his attractive eloquence, 
to the promotion of manifold works of charity 
and beneficence. He was an eloquent preacher, 
and fearless in maintaining any cause which he 
advocated. While standing for the principles 
of his church, he was no narrow ecclesiastic, 
but commended his gospel to people of olher 
folds by the breadth of his sympathy and the 
largeness of his charity. Bishop Gilbert was a 
born leader, and yet modest in his self esti- 
mate. Almost his last public utterance was an 
expression of his native humility — "I know my 
limitations," he said, "but I think I can do this 
much: I can go out to some despondent church 
or mission and recharge the batteries." He 
was the president of (he Sons of the American 
Revolution at the time of his death; a member 
of the Society of Colonial Wars; a member, 
also, of the Masonic order. Bishop Gilbert 
twice visited Europe, the last occasion being 
the meeting of the Lambeth conference, in the 
same year as the Queen's Jubilee. His death 
occurred after a brief illness from pneumonia, 
on .March 2, 1000, at his residence in St. Paul. 
His life-long friend, Bishop Tuttle, officiated at 
his burial, assisted by Bishops Edsall, of North 
Dakota, and Millspaugh, of Kansas. The body 
lay in state in Christ church for several hours, 
on Tuesday. March (Kit, and was buried in the 
family lot in Oakland cemetery, St. Paul. Bish- 
op Gilbert had two children: Frances Carvill 



428 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



and Lucy Fierpont, aged at the time of his 
death fourteen and eight rears. Memorial 
services were held and addresses made in many 
of the churches of the diocese in commemora- 
tion of his noble life and example as a bishop 
in the Church of God. Perhaps no event rivals 
so emphatically the widespread sorrow felt at 
his death, and the high esteem in which he was 
held by all who knew him as a man, a citizen, 
and a bishop, as the gathering in St. Paul, at 
the People's church, on Tuesday, March 20, 
1900. The call was issued by twenty-five rep- 
resentative men of the State, including Gov- 
ernor John Lind, Archbishop Ireland, and 
many of the prominent members of St. Paul 
and leading business men. Addresses were 
made by Rev. C. D. Andrews, rector of Christ 
church, Archbishop Ireland, and others of note. 
Bishop Gilbert received from Hobart College 
his Alma Mater in 1873, the honorary degree of 
A. M., and from the same institution, after he 
was made bishop, the degree of S. T. D. and LL. 
D. Seabury Divinity School conferred upon 
him the degree of D. D., and he received the 
same degree from Racine College. 



JARED W. DANIELS. 

i 
Jared Waldo Daniels, M. D., was born at 

Stratford, Coos county, New Hampshire, June 
15, 1827, the son of Joseph and Roxana (Hatch) 
Daniels. His paternal grandfather came from 
Mendon, Massachusetts, and settled in Strat- 
ford, New Hampshire, where he followed farm- 
ing. He also owned and operated lumber and 
flour mills. He was a man of prominence in 
local affairs, and served as a private soldier in 
the War for American Independence. Joseph 
Daniels, the father of our subject, was also a 
farmer. He had two sons and one daughter. 
One of the sons, Dr. A. W. Daniels, has been 
for many years a prominent physician in St. 
Peter, Minnesota ; the other son is the subject 
of this sketch. Jared W. Daniels was "bound 
out" to a farmer when he was seven years of 
age, his father having died when he was four 
years old. His mother lived to the good old 
age of eighty four years, and died at St. Peter, 



Minnesota. When Jared was eleven years of 
age he left the farm and learned the trade of 
cabinet-making. He attended the common 
school and spent six years in an academy, 
working at his trade to pay his way. After 
leaving the academy, he went to Boston and 
studied medicine with his uncle, Dr. B. F. 
Hatch. He then attended medical lectures, 
and afterwards graduated at the Bellevue Med- 
ical College, in New York City. In March, 
1855, he came to Minnesota, and while visiting 
his brother, who was a physician at the lower 
Sioux agency, was appointed to the upper 
Sioux agency at Yellow Medicine, Minnesota. 
He was the first physician to the Sioux Indians 
at thai agency, and to the United States troops 
who were afterwards stationed there, and he 
remained at this agency about seven years. 
In 1802 he was appointed assistant surgeon in 
the Sixth Minnesota Infantry, and was with 
that regiment under General Sibley in the cam- 
paign of that year. "He was the only physician 
in the command of Col. Joseph R, Brown at 
the battle of Birch Coulie, where over one-third 
of the command was killed or wounded before 
re-enforcements came to their relief. He was 
also in the battle of Wood Lake. Hon. Charles 
W. Johnson, who was present at the battle of 
Birch Coulie, made the following statement, 
which appears in the official record of that en- 
gagement : 

"Assistant Surgeon, Jared W. Daniels, had 
accompanied Company A to Birch Coulie, and 
no man on any battle-field displayed more her- 
oism. On the morning of that fateful 2nd of 
September he is remembered as going about, 
bare-headed, examining and binding up the 
wounds of thi- men. He was in great personal 
danger, but seemingly unheedful of it all, he 
never flinched for a moment, and for thirty-six 
hours he never ate a morsel of food nor closed 
his eyes for sleep, so great was the demand 
upon him." 

In 1863 Dr. Daniels crossed the plains with 
General Sibley to the Missouri, and partici- 
pated in the battles of Big Mounds, Buffalo 
Lake and Stony Lake. On his return he was 
promoted to surgeon in the Second Minnesota 
Cavalry, and again crossed the plains in 1804, 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



429 



joining General Sully on the .Missouri river, 
and was with him on the march to the Yellow- 
stone. He was present at the battles of Kill 
Deer Mountain and Bad Lands. On his return 
he was stationed at Fort Snelling until he was 
mustered out in the fall of 1865. Soon after, 
he located at Faribault for the practice of his 
profession. In 1868 Bishop Whipple had mon- 
ey placed in his hands by an act of Congress 
for the benefit of the Indians al Fort Wads- 
worth. Dr. Daniels being well acquainted with 
these Indians, was selected by Bishop Whipple 
to go to Fort Wadsworth and lake charge of 
the distribution, and to look after the relief of 
the Indians. At that time the Indians were 
scattered and very poor — having very little 
clothing except breech-clouts and leggings — 
and they had to be gathered together at the 
agency and cared for. In 1869, I>r. Daniels was 
appointed, by the President, as Indian agent af 
Sisseton. Under his charge they were required 
to work for themselves, or at the agency, for 
everything they received from the Government, 
so that when he left them, in 1871, they all had 
land under cultivation, were dressed like white 
people,- and many of them living in houses of 
their own building; schools were established 
and they were in the way of becoming self- 
supporting. Dr. Daniels provided a code of 
laws, and established the first police force, 
composed of Indians, in the history of the 
Government, to patrol the reservation and the 
frontier, and to suppress the importation and 
the sale of whiskey. He remained in charge of 
the Sisseton agency until December, 1871. He 
was then transferred by General Grant to the 
Red Cloud agency, in Wyoming, to pacify the 
Sioux and other hostile tribes. Here he found 
about 5,000 Indians, consisting of Sioux, Chey- 
ennes and Arapahoes, the greater portion of 
them being in a turbulent state and hostile to 
the Government. Under the influence of the 
Doctor's generous treatment, the number in- 
creased, by others coming in from the north 
and the south, until there was something over 
8,000 Indians at the agency. There were no 
white people at the agency except those in 
Dr. Daniel's employ. He remained at the Red 
Cloud agencv until the fall of 1S7:'., when he 



was appointed inspector of agencies, in which 
capacity he traveled all over the western 
country, visit ing the different Indian agencies 
in Montana, Idaho, Washington, New .Mexico 
and Arizona. In July, 1875, he was sent alone 
to make a treaty with the Sioux, after the In- 
dian Department with a delegation of Indians 
in Washington had failed, by which they were 
to give up their hunting rights south of the 
Platte river, when il was the only place where 
the buffalo could be found. He not only made 
the treaty but dictated to the Indians what 
they should receive, giving I hem wagons, har- 
nesses and cattle instead of guns and ammuni- 
tion, which they most urgently demanded. In 
September of the same year, he was appointed 
as a commissioner to treat with the Indians 
for the cession of the Black Hills. In 1876 he 
was appointed on another commission to treat 
with the same Indians, and effected the treaty 
by which the Black Hills was ceded to the 
United States. In 1886 he was again appointed 
on a commission to make a treaty with the 
Indians in North Dakota, and with all the 
tribes in Montana, northern Idaho and eastern 
Washington, and they effected treaties with all 
these tribes. In L887 he left the Government 
service and returned to Faribault, where he 
has since resided, having retired from the act- 
ive practice of his profession. Dr. Daniels had 
formed an acquaintance with marly all the 
Indian tribes in the Northwest, and could 
speak the Sioux language. He had known 
them intimately in peace and in war, in plenty 
and in poverty, in time of sorrow and in time 
of joy. He had sympathized with their troubles, 
healed their sick and taken part in their fes- 
tivities, until he was loved as one of their own 
people, owing to his just treatment of them 
under all circumstances. This was the secret 
of his success with them. He could go in 
safety where no other white man dared, and 
though he had many narrow escapes, he re- 
ceived no injury, and he never carried arms to 
protect himself. His influence was greater 
among the Indians than that of any other white 
man, and his life was safe when that of another 
would be in jeopardy. Within a few months 
after taking charge of the Red Cloud agency, 



43° 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Dr. Daniels was ordered by tlie Indian Depart- 
ment to take a delegation of Indians to Wash 
ington. In complying he selected Red Cloud — 
the great war chief who had fought the United 
States troops for three years without being 
conquered — and twenty-eight of his leading 
braves. He took them to the Capital. New 
York and Philadelphia, that they might more 
fully appreciate the power of the Government. 
When the Milwaukee railroad desired to ex- 
tend its line through South Dakota the Iu- 
dians would not permit the surveyors to cross 
their reservation. Dr. Daniels was employed 
to get their consent, which they readily 
granted when he explained to them the bene- 
fits to be derived from it. From the Pioneer 
Press (1872) we quote the following: 

"Dr. J. W. Daniels, recently in charge of the 
Indian agency at Lake Traverse, paid a visit 
to his wards in that region prior to his depart- 
ure for the Fort Laramie agency, to which he 
had been appointed. The second night after 
his departure for St. Paul, he was overtaken 
by one of the scouts or messengers, who 
handed him the following curious 'certificate 
of good character,' which is an exact copy of 
the original drawn up in the handwriting of 
Gabrel Renville: 'Dr. J. W. Daniels has been 
our agent for three winters, and in all his busi- 
ness with us he has always been honest and 
upright. We are very much attached to him, 
and regret very much that he is going to leave 
us. We seldom praise a white. man ; we always 
have some fault to find with him; but we know- 
that this man is an honest and a very good 
man. and we want the wise men at Washington 
to know this, and that when we say this, we 
speak nothing but the truth. We. the chiefs 
and head men of the Sisseton and Wahpeton 
bands of Sioux Indians, write this. 

Signed, 
Gabrel Renville, Wicaurpinoufra, 

Yacaudupatotanka. Hokxedanwaxte, 

Ecauapleka, < !antelyapa, 

Wakanto, Akicitanapie.' " 

Waxicanmaza, 

In politics. Dr. Daniels has always been a 
Republican. He belongs to the G. A. R. and 
the Loyal Legion, and is a member of the Epis- 
copal church. lie was married, June -2'.',, 1850, 
to Miss Hortense Eugenie Beardsley, of Ocono- 
mowoc. Wisconsin. Thev had four children. 



of whom two are living: Hortense Y. (Mrs. H. 
B. Hill, of Faribault), and Asa Wilder Daniels. 
living at Placerville, California. Mrs. Daniels 
died in 1869, in St. Peter. Dr. Daniels was 
again married. October 11. 1882, to Mrs. Ella 
W'inslow (nee Norcross), of Faribault. 



MORTIMER H. STANFORD. 

Mortimer Hira Stanford, a leading member 
of the bar of Duluth and northeastern Minne- 
sota, was born at Ogden, near Brockport, Mon- 
roe county. New York, January 7, 1848. His 
ancestors were English, but have lived in this 
country since Colonial times. His father's fam- 
ily were among the early settlers of the eastern 
part of the State of Xew York. His mother's 
family, the Richmonds. were the original set- 
tlers of Chittenden county, Vermont. From 
the proper age until his fourteenth year Mr. 
Stanford attended the public schools of Fen- 
ton, Michigan. In 1864, during the War of the 
Rebellion, he attempted to enlist in the Union 
service as a member of the band in General 
t'uster's cavalry brigade, but was rejected be- 
cause he was two years under the required age. 
A second attempt the same season was more 
successful, and he became a regularly enlisted 
member of the brigade band of General Til- 
son's Fourth Division, Twenty-third Army 
Corps, Department of the Cumberland, then 
on duty in Tennessee. From the summer of 
1864 until March, 1865, this was the post band 
at Knoxville, Tennessee. When General Stone- 
man arrived at Knoxville. in the early spring 
of ISC)."), on his famous expedition against the 
Confederates in eastern Tennessee and North 
Carolina, he ordered the organization to accom- 
pany him. The band was with General Stone- 
man on his noted raid, and was thereafter in 
his division until the close of the war. In 1865, 
upon his discharge from the army, Mr. Stan- 
ford returned to his home in Fenton, Michigan, 
and attended the high school of that town, and 
at Ann Arbor, preparatory to entering college. 
In September, 1866, he entered the University 
of Michigan at Ann Arbor, but during his 
sophomore year left college, returned to 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



43 ' 



Fenton ami began the study of law. He con- 
tinued his private studies until the fall of 1869, 
when he entered the Law Department of the 
University of Michigan, from which lie was 
graduated after a two years' course, in 1871. 
In April, 1871, he was admitted to the bar in 
the Supreme Court of Michigan at Detroit, and 
for a year thereafter was engaged in the prac- 
tice at Fenton. In the fall of 1872 he removed 
to Midland, Michigan, and remained in the 
practice for twenty years. During this period 
he was for three years city attorney of the town 
of Midland, and was prosecuting attorney of 
Midland county for one term. Mr. Stanford re- 
moved to Duluth in 1892. A large number of 
his Michigan clients had transferred their in- 
terests and operations to Duluth and vicinity, 
necessitating his removal. He still represents 
this clientage and has acquired much other 
business. He has been a successful lawyer and 
practitioner from the first, and now has a large 
and lucrative practice. He is regarded as an 
able counsellor and of sound judicial qualities 
And attainments as well. From time to time 
he has conducted successfully many large and 
important cases. His business is now confined 
largely to matters incident In lumbering oper- 
ations, iron mines and corporations, including 
litigation involving titles to pine and mineral 
lands. Mr. Stanford's family consists of a wife 
and two children, lie has attained to the 
Knight Templar's degree in Free Masonry. He 
was formerly a Cleveland Democrat, but a I 
present is conservative and independent in his 
political views. 



DANIEL A. ROBERTSON. 

Col. Daniel A. Robertson, a pioneer news- 
paper man of St. Paul, and at one time 
a prominent journalist of Ohio, a leading- 
politician and one of the strongest charac- 
ters of the NorthStar State, was born at Pictou, 
Nova Scotia, May 13, 1812. He was of High- 
land-Scotch ancestry, with many of the charac- 
teristics of that sturdy race. When he was 
eighteen years of age he removed to New York 
City, where his education was completed and 



where he grew to mature manhood He stud- 
ied law, was admitted to the liar, and lor a 
time engaged in the practice, but eventually 
abandoned the legal profession for literary 
pursuits. Going to the State of Ohio, lie en- 
tered upon a journalistic career as a Democral 
ic newspaper man, and became the editor and 
proprietor of the Mount Vernon Banner, Ohio 
Eagle of Lancaster, the Guernsey County News 
and one of the editors of the Cincinnati En- 
quirer. In 1844 he was appointed United States 
marshal for the Federal District of Ohio, and 
served four years. In 1850 he was elected, from 
Fairfield county, a member of the State Con- 
stitutional Convention, but resigned after three 
months to come to the Northwest. Late in the 
fall of 1850, Colonel Robertson came to Minne- 
sota, and in December of that year established, 
at St. Paul, the historic old pioneer newspaper, 
the Minnesota Democrat. He conducted the 
paper until June, IS.")::, when he sold it to Da- 
vid Olmsted, and it was finally merged with 
the Pioneer. Under the regime of its accom- 
plished editor, the Democrat was a potent fac- 
tor in the growth and development of the fron- 
tier town. It received but little official 
patronage and attained its success and influ- 
ence because of its high, pure tone, its able 
editorials and its general character as a re- 
liable and well made up journal. Retiring from 
the editorial profession, Colonel Robertson en- 
gaged in other pursuits, and soon became 
thoroughly identified and prominent in the 
general affairs of St. Paul and the State. In 
the spring of 1859, he was elected mayor of St. 
Paul, and the following October was elected to 
the Legislature, serving in the session of 1859- 
(il). In 1862 lie was elected sheriff of Ramsey 
county, and by re-election, served four terms. 
For several years he was a member of the city 
board of education, and performed much val- 
uable service for the public schools. He was 
for many years a director of the public library, 
and was a well known member of the State 
Historical Society, with whose work he always 
had great and active sympathy. He was col- 
onel of a State militia regiment before the 
Civil War, of which the famous Pioneer Guards 
and the Shield Guards were companies. Col- 



432 



BIOGEAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



onel Robertson was a man of enlarged views 
and of great strength of mind and character. 
He was a discriminative and close reader — in- 
deed, he was a persistent and untiring student 
— and his generous nature made him desirous 
of accomplishing something for the benefit of 
society and his fellow men. Greatly and prac- 
tically interested in agricultural matters, he 
did very much by his writings and his other 
efforts for the promotion and welfare of the 
farming interests, not alone of the State of 
Minnesota, but of the whole country. He was 
one of the founders of the Minnesota State 
Horticultural Society and its first president. 
Perhaps his greatest distinction in connection 
witli his labors for the bettering of the farm- 
ers' interests was his prominent identification 
with the farmers' secret order of the Patrons 
of Husbandry, or the "grange movement," as 
it was often called. He organized the very 
first grange of the order in the United States, 
and subsequently presented it with a valuable 
library. He always retained his earnest inter- 
est for the welfare of the order, and continued 
to work for it even after his retirement from 
active life. He devoted much time to scientific 
investigation, and for many years was a promi- 
nent member of the National Scientific Asso- 
ciation, and of the American Geographical So- 
ciety of New York City. As before stated, 
Colonel Robertson was a great reader, and he 
was a great thinker. He had traveled exten- 
sively through the United States and Europe, 
and he acquired a very large and valuable li- 
brary, whose contents he fairly mastered. 
Moreover, he had an apt faculty for putting 
his knowledge and his thoughts on paper. At 
intervals in his later life he wrote a number 
of works the manuscripts of which have never 
been published, but are in the custody of the 
State Historical Society. Engaging in busi- 
ness, chiefly in real estate operations, he ac- 
quired a considerable competence, a liberal 
portion of which he expended in the purchase 
of his books and in the pursuit of knowledge 
generally. A portion of his library is now in the 
possession of the State University, and a part in 
the library of the State Historical Society, and 
are among their most valuable and best appre- 



ciated treasures. In person, Colonel Robertson 
had a splendid physique. He was erect and 
dignified, with a military bearing, and alto- 
gether was of commanding and striking 
presence. He was of correct social tastes, per- 
sonally popular, public spirited and patriotic, 
and in every respect a good citizen, neighbor 
and friend. In politics he was always a Demo 
crat, and in his younger life and during ma- 
turity, took an active interest in the affairs of 
his party. As a political writer he was strong 
and terse and a most dangerous antagonist in 
a controversy. His style was clear, scholarly, 
and pleasing, at the same time vigorous and 
forcible. Colonel Robertson died in St. Paul, 
March lti, 1895, in the eighty-third year of his 
life, leaving, besides a widow, three sons: 
William C Victor and Mcintosh Robertson, 
and three daughters: now Mrs. E. R. Langford 
and Mrs. L. B. Stevenson, of St. Paul, and Mis. 
Howard Morris, of Milwaukee. Colonel Rob- 
ertson was married. May 28, 1844, to Julia An- 
nie Bell, of Mount Vernon, Ohio, and, in 1894, 
the golden wedding of this always felicitous 
and congenial union was an incident long to be 
remembered in the social circles of St. Paul. 



WILLIAM S. KING. 



Unique in the history of the Northwest was 
the place filled for over forty years by this pio- 
neer Minneapolitan, whose decease, even at an 
age surpassing that allotted as the natural 
limit of man's life, is felt as an irreparable 
loss. William Smith King was born at Malone, 
Franklin county, New York, December Hi, 
1828. His childhood was better acquainted 
with work than play, and his opportunities for 
schooling were meager. At eight he was set to 
work, with his brothers, to help clear a trad 
of farm land upon which the family had set- 
tled. Four years later his mother died, the 
home was broken up, and William, at the ten- 
der age of twelve, set out to seek his fortune. 
For six years he worked at farming and team- 
ing in the vicinity of the home place, then, at 
eighteen, went to Otsego county and secured a 
position as solicitor for insurance companies of 




The Century Publishing & Engraving Co Chicago- 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



433 



the mutual order, which was then just spring- 
ing into popularity in the rural East. But he 
had energies and aspirations which could not 
long be commanded by so limited and servile 
a sphere of action. He became an eager reader 
of the newspapers, and speedily there devel- 
oped in him that public ideal which actuated 
the powerful achievements of his later years. 
The anti-slavery movement was just beginning 
to engage general attention. In 1S52 the for- 
lorn little Free Soil party nominated John ]'. 
Hale for President and George W. Julien for 
Vice-President; and young King, who by both 
natural sentiment and early training, leaned 
toward radical reform, instituted, in Coopers- 
town, a campaign paper styled the Free Demo- 
crat, to support this Abolition ticket. The fol- 
lowing year he organized a Young Men's 
Republican Club at Cherry Valley — the first 
organization known to assume the name "Re- 
publican" — which nominated a local ticket. 
and, to the amazement of conservative con- 
stituencies, elected some of its candidates. 
During these days our youthful editor mingled 
with radical political leaders who habitually 
assembled at Albany, where his force as a 
speaker and worker made itself felt; and he 
acquired the title of "Colonel," which ever 
afterward clung to him, through his appoint- 
ment on the staff of General Burnside of the 
State militia. When Colonel King came to 
.Minneapolis, in 1858, the political affairs of 
the State were in a condition affording ample 
scope for the exercise of his journalistic pow- 
ers. He procured a printing-press and, early 
in 1859, began issuing tin- Slate Atlas, a week- 
ly newspaper in whose columns his caustic pen 
mercilessly branded the political forces from 
which emanated, among other doubtful meas- 
ures, one for the issuance to certain railroads, 
without sufficient security, of State bonds to 
the amount of .$5,000,000. His editorials, which 
predicted the repudiation of the bonds and held 
the Democratic party responsible for a colossal 
swindle of the people, produced an impression 
which was felt even in eastern markets, and 
the agitation culminated in the total collapse 
of the deal. Meantime the antagonism to sla- 
very was becoming more and more intense, 



inflamed by the arrogant aggression of its ex- 
ponents in the South and its political support- 
ers elsewhere. o n this question, also, the 
Atlas took an extremely radical position, de- 
nouncing the system and its abettors in 11c 
most scathing terms. Indeed, Colonel King's 
title to the "palm" for power of verbal chas- 
tisement was unquestioned in Minnesota. And 
from these two issues resulted such a revulsion 
of political sentiment thai in the election of 
November, 1859, the Slate government, which 
had been conducted on a Democratic basis, 
became Republican in all its departments. 
Apart from his role of editor, the Colonel, as 
one of the enthusiastic "Wide Awakes," played 
also a prominent personal part in the Repub- 
lican campaigning. Wherever Colonel King 
saw injustice looming before him, he threw 
himself against if, absolutely fearless of conse- 
quences to himself. On one occasion, so tierce 
a stand did he take in defending the rights of 
a slave, who was serving a Mississippi family 
on the anti-slavery territory of Minnesota, thai 
his friends found it expedient to constitute a 
guard, which was stationed till night behind 
the barricaded doors of the Atlas office. The 
sweeping victory of I he Republicans was rec- 
ognized as largely resulting from the work of 
Colonel King, which invested him with the 
prestige and authority of a great party leader. 
On the breaking mil of the war Colonel King 
went to Washington, where — together with 
William Windom and Colonel Aldrich — he un- 
sparingly devoted both money and personal 
service in ministrations to the needs of the 
Minnesota soldiers encamped there, awaiting 
orders to the front. Upon the organization, in 
July, 1861, of the first "War Congress." Col- 
onel King was chosen postmaster of the House 
of Representatives, in which position, with the 
exception of a single Congress, he served for 
twelve consecutive years, passing the intervals 
between the sessions in Minneapolis. During 
his residence in Washington, his acquaintance 
with public men, which had been large since 
his early journalistic experience in New York. 
became extended to include practically everj 
body prominent in (he public affairs of the 
countrv. Although called to the duties of a 



434 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



National post, however, and possessing a pres- 
tige and natural gifts which seemed to pro- 
claim for him a brilliant political career, the 
welfare of his home city was an ever-cherished 
and powerfully promoted cause. Among the 
many institutions for which Minneapolis is 
largely indebted to his influence or substantial 
support are, its street railway, Lakewood cem- 
etery and the Harvester works. The enterprise 
of the Mechanical and Agricultural Associa- 
tion, also, beginning under the control of a 
corporation, was later conducted by Colonel 
King individually. His extensively exploited 
fairs, with their choice exhibits and original 
and striking devices for entertainment — which 
earned for him the sobriquet of "Old Thauma- 
turgus" — drew people from all parts of the 
country to Minneapolis, where not a few took 
up their permanent abode, did more than any 
other thing to advertise the city and facilitate 
its growth. Colonel King exerted his influence 
effectively toward the establishment of the 
public park system of Minneapolis, and ex- 
tended it by generous donations of valuable 
land. The first section of the Northern Pacific 
Eailroad, extending across Minnesota between 
the St. Louis and Red rivers, was constructed 
under a contract assumed by Colonel King ami 
other residents of the Twin Cities. Put prob- 
ably of all his work, that in connection with 
the press effected the deepest and most far- 
reaching results. lie furthered the establish- 
ment of the Minneapolis Tribune and was a 
heavy stockholder in the Pioneer Press, whose 
Minneapolis side he conducted for a number of 
years with his characteristic zeal for justice 
and progress. Upon the expiration of his serv- 
ice as postmaster in the House of Representa- 
tives, he was elected to Congress from the 
Fourth District of .Minnesota. lie entered this 
office with the most auspicious outlook; but 
the tranquillity of his course was interrupted 
by the action of political enemies, who incrim- 
inated him in connection with the passage of a 
certain subsidy measure, lie was exonerated, 
however, by the investigating committee, ami 
by the unanimous vote of both House and Sen 
ate. In his later days. Colonel King served as 
secretary of the Minneapolis Board of Trade; 



and he had at a previous period filled for sev- 
eral years the office of Surveyor General of 
logs and lumber for the Second District of 
Minnesota. The Colonel delighted in every- 
thing pertaining to rural life; and while still 
in Washington he began to acquire lands about 
lakes Calhoun and Harriet, where he estab- 
lished the famous Lyndale stock farm. Event- 
ually, this property becoming involved, he 
transferred it to his friend, Philo Remington, 
of New York, who undertook to clear it of 
claims. Later, complications arose which led 
to the noted King-Remington equity suit, in 
the settlement of which, properties to the 
amount of $2,000,000 reverted to Colonel King. 
But he was too generous hearted in public en- 
terprise and private friendship to continue rich 
in worldly goods. Colonel King was twice 
married: the first time to Mary Elizabeth 
Stevens, of Ilion, New York. The second Mrs. 
King, who survives her husband, was Caroline 
M. Arnold, also of Ilion. The two children of 
Colonel King are: a daughter, who, with her 
family, lives iu the King residence on Nicollet 
island, and a son, Preston King, of Minneap- 
olis. Colonel King's was a remarkable person- 
ality. His boundless energy seemed to infect 
with vitality all men and enterprises with 
which he came in contact. Such magnetism 
is a tremendous force for good or evil, and his 
determined for good. A pronounced individ- 
uality, he was no egotist. It was ever the 
righteous, unpopular cause which he espoused, 
forgetful of personal advantage or even secur- 
ity. He was reckoned a poor business man; 
but with the power he wielded there is no 
doubt that, had he made it his life purpose, he 
could have become a great capitalist. The 
amassing of wealth, however, would have 
seemed to him a petty and unworthy end for 
which to strive. He had his faults; but they 
wore of that vigorous and open type, easy to 
condone. He was a good hater, but he never 
played foul; and it seems something incon- 
gruous, even, that the death angel should have 
come to reckon with him in the darkness of 
the night. It was some hours before dawn on 
February 24. 1!)00, that Colonel King put off 
mortality and followed the grim messenger 




The Century Publishing & tnjmviny Co Chicago- 



^o^a 







BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



435 



hence; and the discarded earthly garb fittingly 
rests in Lakewood, from which fair spot 
stretches in all directions portions of the noble 
park system which was tirst fostered as one 
of many ideals in his ureal soul. 



JAMES M. l'.ONYLEH. 



Maj. James Madison Bowler was born Jan- 
uary 10, 1838, at Lee, Maine, lie comes of old 
New England stock on both sides, liis ancestors 
having been among the early pilgrims, and sev- 
eral of them served in the Revolution and the 
War of 1812. Edward Howler, the father of 
our subject, was born at Palermo. Maine, Sep 
tember 3, 1811. He was engaged in mercantile 
pursuits, the lumber business and farming, and 
was a member of the Maine Legislature. He 
married Clara Augusta Smith, of Litchfield, 
Maine. James M. received his early education 
in the common schools and the Normal Acad- 
emy of his native town, and later attended 
West brook Seminary at Stevens Plains, Maine. 
He began life as a school teacher in his own 
State, and in 1857 came west and located at 
Hale's Corners. Milwaukee county, Wisconsin, 
where he again taught school for one 
year. In 1858 he removed to Minnesota ami 
located at St. Anthony, where he remained for 
about one year. He then went to Nininger. 
Minnesota, and once more resumed his old vo- 
cation, school teaching. In 1871 Mr. Bowler 
took up a homestead claim at Bird Island, Min- 
nesota, where he has since resided. He followed 
fanning almost exclusively until 1N7S; about 
three years later he was engaged as traveling 
collector for the N. W. Mfg. & Car Co., also 
subsequently the Minneapolis Harvester Com- 
pany. He was also identified with the pur- 
chasing of the right of way for the M. & N. W. 
R. R. Since 1887, he has been engaged in the 
real estate and loan business. With the busi- 
ness and local affairs of the State. Major Bow- 
ler has long been prominently identified. 
Eminently public spirited, he has taken part 
in the public improvements, and contributed 
his share to the success of every enterprise hav- 
ing for its object the good of the community; 



and has been conspicuous in the public service 
of his adopted Slate. He was a member of the 
Legislature in ls?s. and ran for Congress on 
the Populist ticket in 1S!U; was a candidate 
for Lieutenant Governor on the Fusion ticket 
in 1896 and in L898. He has tilled several pub- 
lic offices and educational positions in both 
Nininger and at Bird Island, his present home. 
The Major is well informed in all agricultural 
matters, and has given the subject much inves- 
tigation, though! and attention. His appoint 
ment to the office of State Dairy and Food 
Commissioner, January 6th, 1899, was not only 
a recognition of his fitness for tin' place, but a 
compliment to his enterprise, liberality, and 
general worth as a citizen and a man. A fellow 
citizen of high standing, who has known Major 
Bowler long and intimately, says of him: 

"He is a man of keen perceptions, quick ac- 
tion and strong will; very decided in his ways 
in all business matters. He can be very stern 
when the occasion demands, and yet his dispo- 
sition is naturally mild. He is a man of re- 
markable tact and will power, and as a father, 
husband, and friend he is kind, gentle and lov- 
ing." 

Major Bowler served four years and eight 
months in the Rebellion and the Indian War. 
He enlisted first in Company E, First Minne- 
sota, in April, 1861. September 1, of the same 
year, he enlisted in Company F. Third Minne- 
sota, as a private. He was promoted to 
corporal, sergeant, second lieutenant, and was 
appointed captain December 1. 1862, at the age 
of twenty-three. He was taken prisoner at 
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, July 10, 1802, and 
paroled at McMinnville, from which place un- 
der a Confederate officer he was marched back 
to Murfreesboro, and later sent to Benton Bar- 
racks. St. Louis. Missouri, where he remained 
until called for service in the Indian campaign. 
He was a company commander at the baffle of 
Wood lake, of which the Third Regiment and 
Renville Rangers bore the brunt. Though this 
battle did not terminate the Indian War, 
if was very important in its results, and in 
some respects it was decisive. It effected the 

release of about three h lred captives which 

the Indians held, and of whom one hundred 



436 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



and fifty were while women and children — 
many of them refined and educated women and 
teachers, who were being subjected to barbar- 
ous treatment. Ii also effected the surrender 
of 1,500 Indians, including four hundred war- 
riors, among whom were those afterward con- 
victed aud executed for having perpetrated 
some of the massacres. Of the other battles in 
which the Major took part, the siege of Vicks- 
burg is perhaps the most important. April 1, 
1865, he was commissioned major of the 113th 
U. S. C. I., aud was mustered out of the service 
April 9, 1866. Major Bowler is a member of 
the G. A. B. and Loyal Legion, and of his mili- 
tary service he says: "Of no part of my life 
am I prouder than of that portion which I gave 
to my country to aid in the preservation of its 
existence." Although Major Bowler is not a 
member of any religious denomination, he is a 
patron of churches, and well known as a gen- 
tleman of strict morality and rectitude. He is 
a member of the Eastern Star Lodge and is a 
Free Mason; he is regarded not only as a 
worthy member of that ancient and honorable 
craft, but as an exemplary member of 
society, and of the community in which 
he lives. November 1. 1862, Major Bowler was 
married to Lizzie S. Caleff, of Penfield, New 
Brunswick, who is a descendant of Dr. Caleff, 
a noted surgeon in the English Army. They 
have had ten children, eight of whom are still 
living, and two deceased. Those living are Vic- 
toria A. (now Mrs. W. T. Law, of Northfield, 
Minnesota I. Burton If., Amy G., Kate C., Mad- 
ison C., Frank L., Josie A„ and Edna B., all 
residents of Bird Island. Minnesota. 



ROBERT A. SMITH. 



Koberl Armstrong Smith, of St. Paul, was 
born in Booneville, Warrick county. Indiana, 
June 13, L827. His father, William Smith, was 
a native of England, and his mother, whose 
name was Elizabeth Graham, was a member 
of an old and prominent Virginia family. Mr. 
Smith was reared to manhood in his native 
Stale, and completed his education at the Uni- 
versity of Indiana, graduating from the Law 



Department of that institution in 1850. He 
was married, in 1851, to Miss Mary E. Stone, 
of Bloomington, Indiana, and in 185:1 came 
west to the Territory of Minnesota, and located 
at St. Paul. Mr. Smith is known to everyone 
as a prince among men. He has been through 
as much, perhaps, of the exciting and disa- 
greeable experiences of political life as any 
man in Hie State; but when the battle has 
been fought, no matter how severe or unwar- 
ranted might lie the things said of him person- 
ally or politically, they were all forgotten, and 
the same genial, generous smile and handshake 
which are so entirely part of the man, were 
given to friend and foe alike. A more surpris- 
ing career of popularity and public favor than 
that of Robert A. Smith it would be hard lo 
find in the entire political history of the coun- 
try. A brief resume of that career, so far as 
it relates to public affairs, will easily establish 
this proposition. He began his public service 
before he was fairly out of college, having 
graduated at twenty-three. He was elected 
auditor of Warrick county. Indiana, and had 
served four years before he resigned and set 
his face toward the west, landing in St. Paul 
May 1, 1853. Mr. Smith started out in life with 
no capital to speak of. except his education 
and his determination to advance himself in 
every legitimate way within his reach. Shortly 
after his arrival in St. Paul, he was appointed 
secretary to Governor Gorman, and acted as 
Territorial librarian up to 1856. He was in 
that year elected treasurer of Ramsey county, 
and held that office for twelve consecutive 
years, till 1868, when he was elected alderman 
of the city of St. Paul. He was elected presi- 
dent of the common council and presided over 
that body for a period of three years. He was 
then elected as a member of the Lower House 
of the Legislature and served for a term of two 
years. This was followed by his election as 
mayor and Stab- Senator, and served in both 
offices together. For seven and one-half years 
he officiated as mayor of the city, and four 
years as State Senator. Since the organization 
of the Stale Reformatory board Mr. Smith has 
served as president of that body. Be was never 
defeated for public office but once, and he re- 







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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



437 



trieved himself the next election by being once 
more elected to act as the city's chief magis- 
trate, lli.s selection as postmaster of St. Paul 
completes the term of forty-eight years, during 
which he has been engaged in official life, most 
of the time serving the public in one or an- 
other capacity, and all the time al serious loss 
and inconvenience to himself and bis business 
relations. In 1866 Mr. Smith engaged in the 
banking business in St. Paul, as a member of 
the Arm of Dawson, Smith & Reed, and was 
one of the incorporators of the Bank of Minne- 
sota, and is now one of its vice-presidents. He 
is rated as a financier of great ability. There 
never was a more generous man in his natural 
impulses than Robert A. Smith. His sympa- 
thies have ever been enlisted in behalf of dis- 
tress and sorrow, and as bis sympathies have 
gone forth so, too, have the more substantial 
expressions of regard been frequent with him. 
Through bis kindly nature he has often been 
imposed upon by the undeserving, but to his 
credit, be it said, there has been no lessening 
of bis faith in human nature or of his deep 
sympathy with human distress. X<> citizen of 
St. Paul has a higher standing in all that 
makes for manhood, integrity, ability and so- 
cial attractions. Of the five children born to 
Mr. and Mis. Smith, three survive, two daugh- 
ters ami one son. 



ALEXANDER T. BIGELOW. 

Alexander Thompson Bigelow, D. D. S., of 
St. Paul, was born April 5, 1841, al Ryegate, 
Vermont. His parents were John and Mary 
('. (Thompson) Bigelow, both natives of Ver- 
mont, and of New England parentage, whose 
ancestors figured prominently in early Colonial 
history and in the War for Independence. Dr. 
Bigelow is a son of the Revolution on the pa- 
ternal side, through Maj. Jabez Bigelow and 
Capt. Ebenezer Mcintosh. The latter was con 
spicuous in pre-revolutionary times, and was 
one of the immortal "tea party." Alexander, 
the subject of this sketch, spent his boyhood 
on his father's farm among the hills of Ver- 
mont. Here he attended the common school 



and the Academy at Mclndoe. He afterwards 
went to Hovel-. New Hampshire, where he 
found employment as a clerk in a book and 
dm- store, lie remained in this employment 
until 1862, when he enlisted in the Fifteenth 
Vermont Infantry, under Col. Redtield Proctor, 
and went with his regiment to the front. A i 
the organization of the company he was made 
sergeant and was afterwards promoted to 
lieutenant. His regiment participated in the 
battle of Gettysburg and gallantly performed 
its duty during the term of service. In August, 
1863, he was mustered out, and went to Boston 
in a clerical capacity, and continuing his inter- 
est in military matters, after a competitive 
examination, was commissioned captain of 
Company II, Second Massachusetts Militia, by 
Gov. John A. Andrew. He commenced tin' 
study of dentistry, in 1865, with Doctors Pisk 
and Ingalls at Clinton. Massachusetts, and al 
the end of two years went into partnership 
with Dr. Ingalls, one of his preceptors. He 
practiced his profession for several years and 
attended lectures at the Boston Dental Col 
lege, where be graduated in 1873 as valedic- 
torian of his (dass, and was elected secretary 
of his Alma Mater. After his graduation he 
opened an office in Boston, where he practiced 
for about four years. On account of too (lose 
application he was obliged to take a rest and 
seek a change of climate. In July. 1876, he 
gave up his Boston office and located at Bis 
niarck, Dakota, where he had a large and re- 
munerative practice, mostly among the officers 
of the frontier posts and their families. He left 
there in October, 1884, and removed to St. 
Paul, where he opened dental rooms, and 
where he has continued in practice ever since. 
That Dr. Bigelow slands at the bead of his 
profession is evidenced by his clientele, which 
includes many of the most prominent people 
of the Stale. He is of a literarx turn of mind; 
has written a number of pleasing sketches of 
travel, and many aide articles on subjects per- 
taining to his vocation. some of which have been 
published in magazines and attracted marked 
attention, while others have been read before 
meetings of Dental Associations. The Doctor 
is an ardent and skillful microscopist. He is a 



«8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



member of the State Dental Association, of the 
Military Order of (lie Loyal Legion, a Son of 
the American Revolution, a high Mason, being 
P. H. P. of R. A. Chapter and P. E. O. of 
Knights Templar; is a charter member of the 
St. Paul Chess and Whist Club, and an expert 
player. Was one of its early presidents, also 
one of the originators and the first president of 
the Slate Chess Association. He is a man of 
tine physique, a lover of athletic sports, and 
fond of hunting and fishing. Dr. Bigelow was 
married, November 26, 1883, to Edna A. Kel- 
ley, a native of Marshall, Wisconsin. 



HENRY P. IPHAM. 



Henry Pratt Upham, president of the First 
National Bank of St. Paul, comes of a family 
probably as ancient as any in England. The 
name is found recorded in the Domes-day book, 
prior to the Norman conquest. The first of the 
Upham family who settled in America was 
John Upham, who landed at Weymouth. .Mas- 
sachusetts, in 1635. His descendants took a 
prominent pari in the stirring events of the 
Colonial period, participating in the various 
wars from that of King Philip to the Revolu- 
tion. Mr. Upham is ninth in the line from the 
original John, the emigrant. His father. Joel 
W. Upham, was a native of Brookfield, Mas 
sachusetts. He married Miss Seraphine Howe, 
also of an old Colonial family, who died in 1839. 
Mr. Upham. who was one of the pioneer manu- 
facturers of the famous turbine water wheels. 
died at Worcester in 1879. Their son, Henry 
I'. Upham, was born in Milbury, Massachu- 
setts, on January 26, ls:;7. He was educated 
at the public schools of Worcester, Massachu- 
setts, and in 1856, after quitting school, came 
west to seek his fortune in the then almost un- 
known Territory of Minnesota. Mr. Upham 
reached St. Paul on March PI. 1S57. It was 
then a straggling village, with little about it 
to indicate its future importance. Though not 
yet of age, Mr. Upham confidently embarked 
in business, forming a partnership with Chaun- 
cv W. Griggs. The firm engaged in the lum- 
ber trade and continued for some years with 



success, fn L863 Mr. Upham became teller in 
the bank of Thompson Brothers, then the lead 
ing institution of its class in the city. When 
these gentlemen organized the First National 
Bank of St. Paul, Mr. Upham became its teller 
and later its assistant cashier. In 1869 he took 
part in the organization of the City Bank of 
St. Paul, of which he was cashier. Four years 
later it was deemed advantageous to merge 
that bank with the First National, and Mr. Up- 
ham became cashier of the consolidated insti- 
tution, and in 1880, upon the death of Horace 
Thompson, he was elected president. As the 
head of one of the leading financial institutions 
of St. Paul, Mr. Upham has been a conspicuous 
figure in the commercial life of that city for a 
score of years. On September 2:->, ISliS, Mr. Up- 
ham married Miss Evelyn G. Burbank. daugh- 
ter of the late Col. Simeon Burbank. They 
have three children, Gertrude, Grace and John 
Phineas. The fondness for books and reading, 
which Mr. Upham has indulged to the extent 
of collecting a large private library, has also 
been recognized by his election to various so- 
cieties of a literary, historical and genealogical 
character. He is regarded as one of the most 
thorough genealogical scholars in the United 
Stales. For several years he was director of 
the St. Paul Public Library. Mr. Upham is a 
valued member of the American Antiquarian 
Society and the Society of Antiquity of Wor- 
cester. Massachusetts, of the Minnesota His- 
torical Society, of the Minnesota Club, of the 
Ramsey County Pioneer Association, of St. 
Paul Chamber of Commerce, and of the Ma- 
sonic and Knights Templar orders. 



KENNETH CLARK. 



Kenneth Clark, president of the Merchants' 
National Bank of St. Paul, was born in Fort 
Plain, New York. August 18, 1847, the son of 
William and Anna M. (Neukerck) Clark. Will 
iam Clark was prominent in local affairs and 
served in the House of Representatives and 
State Senate of New York. Kenneth Clark 
received his education first at Russell's school 
in New Haven and later attended Union Col- 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



439 



lege, at Schenectady, New York, being a mem- 
ber of the class of 1869. Mr. Clark came to St. 
Paul in 1870, and at once began a business ca- 
reer which has been marked by continual suc- 
cess. He first entered (he law office of W. P. 
Warner, with whom he remained two rears. In 
1872 he, with Mr. De Coster, established the 
well known furniture house of De Coster & 
Clark, on Jackson street, and remained active- 
ly connected with the firm until 1892, a period 
of twenty years. In the latter year, Mr. Clark 
retired from this firm as an active member. 
In 1890 Mr. Clark was chosen vice-president of 
the Capital Bank of St. Paul; in January, 1897, 
he resigned to accept the vice presidency of the 
Merchants' National Bank of St. Paul, and in 
February was elected its president. He is also 
a trustee of the St. Paul Gas Light Company; 
is president of the Edison Electric Light Com- 
pany; a trustee of the State Savings Bank, ami 
a special partner in the firm of Sharood & 
Crooks, manufacturers of and dealers in boots 
and shoes. These many enterprises fully occu- 
py his time and talents, but he is able to cope 
with all the requirements which these varied 
interests place upon his shoulders. For several 
years Mr. Clark has taken time from his busi- 
ness to act as a member of the hoard of fire 
commissioners, in which capacity he has also 
served with ability and with an eye to the in- 
terests of the city, and is now president 
of the fire board. One of the important posts 
which he has filled was as treasurer of the 
Hinckley fire relief committee, having been ap- 
pointed to the committee by Governor Nelson 
when the well-remembered calamity fell upon 
the State. In this capacity Mr. Clark had the 
distribution of $200,000 in money, not to speak 
of the large amount of stores and supplies, 
and the excellent manner in which this great 
trust was performed is best shown by the final 
report made by the relief committee, after the 
sufferers had all been taken care of in proper 
manner and given a new start in life. Mr. 
Clark is also president of the St. Paul Bethel, 
a worthy charity, which is doing much good 
along its own lines. He is a member of the 
Minnesota Chapter of the Loyal Legion by in- 
heritance. Mr. Clark is always in the fore- 



most ranks of those who have the welfare of 
the city at heart, and ever ready to further 
such movements as tend to the advancement of 
St. Paul. Withal, he is a man who dislikes 
notoriety, being content to work along those 
linos which he has laid out for himself, and 
has never sought political preferment or office 
of any kind. In 1872, Mr. Clark married Alice 
Gilchrist, of Brooklyn, New York. 



JAMES DOBBIN. 



To those who are well acquainted with the 
work and ideals of the Shattuck school, at 
Faribault, the biography of its rector— the 
Rev. James Dobbin, D. D.— will be of especial 
interest; for during the last third of a century 
he has been the responsible head and manager 
of that highly-reputed institution. Dr. Dobbin 
is a native of New York State, born in Salem. 
Washington county, June 29, 1833. He is of 
Scotch-Irish extraction, his two grandfathers. 
William and John Dobbin, having come from 
the north of Ireland to our shores soon after 
the Revolutionary War and established the 
family here. Joseph Dobbin — son of William 
and father of our subject — was a lm\ at the 
time of this migration. He later became en- 
gaged in agriculture, following that industry 
for many years in the Empire Stale. lie mar- 
ried Martha Dobbin, daughter of John— the 
other original settler — and reared a family of 
six children, James, of our sketch, being the 
second in order of birth. James grew up on 
his father's farm, assisting with its work and 
attending the country schools to the age of 
seventeen years. He then entered the Wash- 
ington Academy, in his native town of Salem, 
from which he passed to the Argyle Academy, 
in this latter institution finishing his prepara- 
tion for collegiate work. Before proceeding to 
college, however, he spent two years — 1855 to 
1857 — in charge of the school at Argyle. He 
then became a student at Union College with 
an advanced standing; and at the end of two 
years graduated with the degree of A. P.. Tt 
was in 1859 — his graduation year — that Mr. 
Dobbin first came to Minnesota. Locating at 



440 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Faribault, he taught for a year in the Mission 
school established a few months previously by 
Rev. J. Lloyd Breck, 1>. I). In 1860 he returned 
to New York and to his old position in the 
Argyle Academy, in which he officiated for 
another year, (hen went to Greenwich, New 
York, to assume charge of the academy at that 
place. This he conducted until 1864, then re- 
turned to Faribault and entered Seabury Di- 
vinity School as a student of theology, at the 
same time resuming his duties as assistant to 
Dr. Breck. At Easter, 1867, he succeeded Dr. 
Breck as resident head of Seabury Hall and 
rector of the Grammar department, which was 
afterward named Shattuck School, and entered 
upon his long and useful career, throughoul 
which his fitness for the duties of his respon- 
sible post has been abundantly attested by the 
continuously flourishing condition of the 
school. He was ordained to the diaconate 
Trinity Sunday 1867, and advanced to the 
priesthood Trinity Sunday 1868 by Bishop 
Whipple. A man of marked executive ability 
and keen foresight, he has succeeded where 
many fail, in beginning with no resources and 
laying a strong, permanent foundation of a 
high class institution for the training and edu- 
cation of boys. His incessant labor for the past 
thirty-three years has been inspired and stimu- 
lated by an enthusiastic appreciation of the 
value of the school, assembling, as it does, from 
all parts of the country, boys at the critical, 
formative age when thorough and wholesome 
intellectual and personal training may make 
all the difference between a noble manhood 
and a weak or vicious one. Although wholly 
dependent for support on its earnings from 
its inception, Shattuck has such superb natural 
advantages and lias been so wisely adminis- 
tered, that it is to-day one of the best of church 
training schools, and may be favorably com 
pared with many an institution of extensive 
independent resources. Feeling, however, the 
pressure of the ever-increasing demand for 
such training as it affords, it is now taking 
measures with a view to greatly extending its 
capacity and facilities, confident that it but 
awaits a suitable endowment to permanently 
establish its place as the foremost preparatory 



school of the great West, and make it an as- 
sured boon to an indefinite succession of gener- 
ations to come. And one of its strongest 
guarantees of future greatness is realized in 
the personality of its rector. li is written of 
Dr. Dobbin by one who is in a position to esti- 
mate his character authoritatively: "The rec- 
tor of Shattuck School has especial fitness for 
his work. To a varied scholarship, with an in- 
herited tenacity of purpose, and a refined taste, 
are added a demeanor that is dignified yet not 
still', and a firmness of discipline which is un- 
bending, yet coupled with ease of manner and 
a cordiality which wins all hearts. His inllu 
ence <>n the students is refining and elevating. 
He is a Christian gentleman of the noblest 
elass." lie received his degree of D. 1)., in the 
year 188S, from Trinity College, Hartford, Con- 
necticut. Dr. Dobbin is a family man, having 
been first married on December 12, 1860, to 
Fannie I. Leigh, daughter of Jesse S. Leigh, 
of Argyle, New York. Five years later his 
wife died, leaving one daughter — Jessie. On 
April !», 1N74, he married Elizabeth L. Ames. 
of Niles, Michigan. Of the second union was 
born a son, Edward S. Dobbin, a recent grad- 
uate of Trinity College. 



JARED HOW. 



Jared How, senior member of the well- 
known law firm, How & Taylor, of St. Paul, 
was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Decem- 
ber 9, 1857, the son of Phideas Berkeley How 
and Abby (Clark) How. He is descended on 
his father's side from a family well known in 
the commercial and legal life of Massachusetts, 
which settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, prob- 
ably in about 1630; and on his mother's side 
from a family of which Judge Greenleaf Clark 
is a member. He was educated at private and 
public schools until 1871. when lie entered 
Highland Military Academy of Worcester, 
Massachusetts, from which he was graduated 
in 1876. In October, 1877, he started to pre- 
pare for Harvard College, and completed his 
preparation in a period of eight months. He 
was graduated from Harvard with a degree of 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



441 



A. B. in 1881, and in December of the same 
year entered the Harvard Law School as a 
special student. His work in the first year 
was sufficient to qualify him as a regular stu- 
dent for the second year, but he left at the end 
of the second .year without applying for a de- 
gree, and came to St. Paul in August, 1883. He 
studied law in the office of Bigelow, Flandrau 
& Squires until 1885, when the firm of Clark, 
Eller & How, consisting of Greenleaf Clark. 
the late Homer ('. Eller and himself, was 
formed. This firm was dissolved January 1, 
1888, by Hie withdrawal of Judge (Mark from 
active practice, and the firm of Eller & How 
continued until 1896, when Pierce Butler was 
added to it, the firm name being Eller, How & 
Butler. Upon the decease of Mr. Eller, soon 
after, the firm became How & Butler, and so 
continued until the first of September, 1899, 
when if was dissolved by the withdrawal of 
Mr. Butler from general practice, and the new 
firm of How & Taylor, consisting of the subject 
of this sketch and Carl Taylor— then first as- 
sistant corporation counsel of the city of si. 
Paul — was formed, and still continues the gen- 
eral practice of law. This is the bare outline 
of the life and professional career of Mr. How. 
For those who are acquainted with the charac- 
ter and professional attainments of his former 
and present associates, this is sufficient. To 
have been so intimately associated witb Green- 
leaf Clark and Homer C. Eller speaks more 
convincingly of Mr. How's character and stand- 
ing at the bar than any words we could write; 
not that he has shone by their reflect ed light, 
but that such connections are a sure index of 
his own high character and ability. Mr. How 
undoubtedly possesses all of the qualities thus 
indicated. He is universally regarded as one 
of the leaders of the bar of St. Paul, a learned 
lawyer, safe counselor, forcible and convincing 
advocate. His mind is clear and discrimina- 
ting, and his power of applying the law to the 
facts of the particular case singularly un- 
erring. He has been employed in very many 
of the most important cases in the courts of 
this State, and enjoys the respecf and confi- 
dence of the judges to an unusual extent. His 
present firm has an extensive practice. But 



the distinguishing feature of .Mr. How's char- 
acter may lie said to be his strict sense of pro- 
fessional as well as personal integrity. lie is 
himself hones! beyond suspicion, both in his 
private life ami in the practice of his profes 
sion, and is intolerant of deceit in others and 
a foe to dishonesty or meanness wherever he 
sees or suspects if. He measures others by his 
own high standard, and this occasionally leads 
him to be over severe and critical. Mr. How 
has nevei' married. He lives in comfortable 
bachelor apartments, is fond of books and of 
club life. His library is his pride and the envy 
of his friends, lie is a member of the Minne- 
sota Club, Town and Country Club of St. Paul, 
and the University Club of New York. 



THEODORE L. SCHURMEIER. 

Theodore Leopold Schnrmeier, of the firm of 
Lindeke, Warner & Schurmeier, wholesale dry 
goods dealers, St. Paul, was born at St. Louis, 
Missouri, March 14, 1852, the son of Casper H. 
and Caroline Schurmeier. His parents emi- 
grated to America from Germany, their native 
land, and settled first in St. Louis. In 1855 
Casper Schurmeier removed with his family to 
St. Paul, where he made considerable invest- 
ments, and became a well-known business man 
and a universally esteemed citizen. Theodore 
L. was educated in the St. Paul public schools 
and at Baldwin University. Berea, Ohio. In 
1870, under the patronage of J. J. Hill, he en- 
tered the service of the old Manitoba (now the 
Great Northern) Railway Company, where he 
remained for three years. He then entered the 
First National Rank as a bookkeeper; later 
he was made teller, and held that position until 
1878. The original firm of Lindeke, Warner & 
Schurmeier was organized July 1, 1878, and 
Theodore Schurmeier was one of the con- 
stituent members. He has been in charge of 
the finances and credits of the firm from the 
first. He is held in high esteem by his business 
associates for his sound judgment and his care- 
ful and conservative handling of the Arm's 
vital interests, and its high character and pros- 
perity are very largely due to his intelligent 



442 



BTOGRAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



methods, his sagacious conduct, and his fidelity 
to his duties. His rare personal qualities make 
him universally popular among the firm's pa- 
trons. He is always accessible and courteous, 
frank and lair, and as faithful to a business 
obligation as to a sworn oath. Mr. Schurmeier 
has grown with the city of St. Paul and the 
Si ale of .Minnesota from their immaturity to 
I heir present development, and has always been 
interested in their affairs and active in their 
advancement. He has been connected with 
very many public enterprises. In recenl years 
he has been much interested in the work of 
inducing immigration into .Minnesota and the 
Northwest. From the inception of the organ- 
ized movement to that end, he lias been promi- 
nently identified with it. has spent his time 
and money for it, and aided it in every way. 
In the summer of L895 he was practically given 
charge of the project. He has been president 
of the Minnesota Immigration Association, and 
for several years has been president of the 
Northwestern Immigration Association — t he 
latter organization including the States of Wis- 
consin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, 
Idaho, Washington and Oregon, and the 
Province of Manitoba. In the discharge of his 
duties he has visited various portions of tic 
States named, presiding over meetings, conven- 
tions, etc., incidentally doing a great deal of 
hard work, incurring large personal expenses, 
but accomplishing great and lasting good for 
the country. He is thoroughly identified with 
the interests of St. Paul. He is a director in the 
First National Bank and in the St. Paul Trust 
Company; is president of the Schurmeier Land 
and Improvement Company, and vice-presi- 
dent of the C. Gotzian & Company corpora- 
tion; is a trustee of St. Luke's Hospital and of 
the Oakland Cemetery, and holds memberships 
in the Minnesota, the Commercial, and the 
Town and Country Clubs of St. Paul, and in 
the Chicago (Tub. He combines social and re- 
fined tastes with business qualities and public 
spirit lo a happy degree. Though lie depre- 
ciates and half conceals his generous disposi- 
tion, those who are informed on the subject 
know that .Mr. Schurmeier is a liberal and sub- 
stantial friend and patron of works of charity 



and benevolence, and thai the deserving poor 
have no belter friend. He has been a member 
of the Republican party ever since he could 
vote. Always refusing to be a candidate tor 
any office, although often solicited, he has per- 
formed a great deal of valuable service for his 
party, asking no other reward than the tri- 
umph of its principles. In the Presidential 
campaign of 1896 he was chairman of the Ram- 
sey County Republican Committee, and so or- 
ganized tlie sound money forces and conducted 
the campaign as to win a Republican victory 
unprecedented iii the history of the county and 
tlie city of St. Paul. The previous spring he 
led the parly to a most complete triumph in 
tlie municipal campaign. In November, 1882, 
Mr. Schurmeier married Miss Caroline Gotzian, 
a daughter of Conrad Gotzian, deceased, whose 
biography appears elsewhere in this volume. 
Mrs. Schurmeier was born and reared in St. 
Paul. To Mr. and Mrs. Schurmeier have been 
born three daughters, whose Christian names 
are Conradine, Theodora, and Hildegarde. The 
imposing and beautiful family residence on 
Crocus Hill, St. Paul, is a model of architec- 
tural elegance and the home of a refined and 
intelligent household. 



HASCAL R. BRILL. 



There are many able, fearless and conscien- 
tious men in the judiciary of the State of Min- 
nesota, but there is none who is held in higher 
esteem by the people of his district, than Judge 
Hascal R. Brill, who has occupied the District 
Bench of St. Paul for over a score of years. 
.Judge Brill's ancestors were Holland Dutch, 
who settled in Dutchess county. New York. 
His grand | ia rents removed to Canada, just over 
the Vermont line, shortly after the Revolution 
ary War. and took up land and opened farms 
on which some of their descendants slill live. 
Hascal R. was born at Phillipsburg, in the 
Province of Quebec, August II). 1846; the son 
of Thomas Russel (who was a farmer by occu- 
pation) and Sarah Sagar Brill. When thirteen 
years of age he came to Minnesota with his 
parents, who settled on a farm near Kenyon, 




The, c&rtfajy Publi5/U3ty <& Enytnvmy Co Chicago- 




BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



443 



in Goodhue county. Here young Brill lived 
until he was twenty-one years of age. winking 
on the farm, attending school in the winter, 
and sometimes teaching. His early education 
he received in the district school, and prepared 
for college in Hamline University, which he 
attended irregularly for four years. He then 
entered the University of Michigan, but re- 
mained only one year. In December, 1S67, he 
went to St. Paul for the purpose of taking up 
the study of law, and entered the office of 
Judge Palmer and Morris Lamprey. He was 
admitted to practice, December 31, 180!>, and 
formed a partnership with Stanford Newel. 
After a practice of about three years, he was 
elected Probate Judge for Ramsey county, 
which office he held in 1873 and 1874. On the 
demise of William S. Hall, first Judge of the 
Court of Common Pleas in Minnesota, Gov- 
ernor Davis appointed Judge Brill, March 1, 
1875, to fill the vacancy. A few months later 
he was elected to the same office for a term of 
seven years. At the first session of the Legis- 
lature in 187G, the Court of Common Pleas w as 
merged into that of the District Court for the 
Second Judicial District, Judge Brill occupy- 
ing the bench, and he has held that office ever 
since. To place Judge Brill ahead of his asso- 
ciates on the bench is not making any invidious 
comparisons, for he had earned his pre-emi- 
nence by years of hard judicial service. The 
fact that Judge Brill received his re-nomina- 
tions to the bench at the hands of both the 
great political parties is significant of the es- 
teem in which he is held. Although a Repub- 
lican in principle, Judge Brill has not taken 
any active part in politics since his elevation to 
the bench. The Judge has held numerous 
church offices, and at present is chairman of 
the board of trustees of the First M. E. Church 
of St. Paul, of which church he has been an 
influential member ever since he located in 
that city. He was a member of the last two 
general conferences of the Methodist church, 
and served as chairman of the judiciary com- 
mittee. In the quiet of his own home, freed 
from the vexations of his judicial duties, Judge 
Brill seeks to satisfy his taste for literature; 
occasionally he has delivered a lecture or an 



address on literary and historical subjects, 
and also on topics of current public interest. 
He has been trustee df Hamline University for 
many years, and was president of the board 
for some time. He was married, August 11. 
1873, to Cora A. dray, of Suspension Bridge, 
New York. Of iliis marriage liave Keen born 
six children. 



LEONARD A. ROSING. 

Leonard August Rosing, a prominent busi- 
ness man of Cannon Falls, now serving as 
private secretary to Governor Lind, was born 
in Malmo, Sweden. August 1".), 1861. He is the 
son of August <!. and Marie Charlotte (Flint- 
berg) Rosing. His mother, who died in 1894, 
was also a native of Sweden, her birthplace 
being the capital city of Stockholm. August 
G. Rosing left his native country to seek his 
fortune in the new world in 1868. He settled 
on a farm in Goodhue county, Minnesota, and 
the family followed a year later. About twelve 
years ago he retired from farming, and re- 
moved to Red Wing. Though seventy-seven 
years of age, he is still in active business, being 
secretary of the Scandinavian Relief Associa- 
tion of Red Wing. Leonard A. was a lad of 
seven when the family settled in Minnesota, 
and this has been his residence ever since. His 
only educational advantages were the district 
schools of Goodhue county, which he attended 
during the winter months. He was employed 
on his father's farm until twenty years of age, 
when, becoming tired of the incessant toil with 
the uncertainty of fair returns for his labor, 
he determined to give up farming and fit him- 
self for mercantile business. He took a posi- 
tion as clerk in a general store at Cannon 
Falls, which position he held until 1888. 
Though his compensation was very small at 
first, he was active and energetic, winning pro- 
motion and increase in salary from year to 
year. Naturally genial and courteous in man- 
ner, he seemed to be a natural salesman. He 
was ambitious and saving, and after seven 
years' service as a clerk, he was able to engage 
in business for himself. He formed a partner- 



444 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



ship with H. A. Van Campeii and opened a 
boot and shoe store in Cannon Falls, the Ann 
name being Van Campen & Rosing. In 1893 
Mr. Van Campen sold his interest to Samuel 
Kraft, and the firm became Rosing & Kraft, 
which still continues. In politics Mr. Rosing 
was a Republican until 1888, but in the cam 
paign of 1890, he gave his support to the Demo- 
cratic candidates, as being more in accord with 
his principles on important National questions. 
Since 1890 he has been an active participant 
in every campaign, and his popularity was 
shown by his election as chairman of the Dem- 
ocratic Stale Central Committee for the cam- 
paign of 1890. He managed this campaign 
with such skill and aggressiveness that Hon. 
John Lind came within 3,300 votes of being 
elected Governor. By unanimous consent he 
was retained as chairman for the notable cam- 
paign of 1898, which has passed into history 
as the first instance in which the regular Re- 
publican candidate for Governor of Minnesota 
has been defeated. In speaking of Mr. Rosing's 
ability as a political leader, one high in the 
counsels of the party says: 

"After the Chicago convention in 1890 most 
of the old leaders of the Democratic party in 
Minnesota refused to accept the platform that 
party adopted, and younger and newer leaders 
became necessary. Mr. Rosing was chosen 
chairman of the State Central Committee, and 
immediately entered upon the work of organiz- 
ing the Democratic party of Minnesota on as 
broad lines as possible. This work of organiza- 
tion it was impossible to complete dining the 
campaign of 1896, and the party was again de- 
feated in Minnesota, as it had been during the 
previous thirty-eight years. Notwithstanding 
that fact, Mr. Rosing continued the work of or- 
ganization with unabated vigor, and notwith- 
standing the lack of funds and a great many 
other obstacles, succeeded so well that in 1898 
the Democratic .and People's parties succeeded 
in electing their joint candidate as Governor, 
and the fusion element in the Legislature was 
largely increased. Mr. Rosing is peculiarly 
well qualified for the leading position he occu- 
pies in politics. He is an indefatigable worker, 
and an enthusiastic believer in the principles 
he advocates. He has a wide knowledge of 
public affairs, is an excellent judge of human 
nature, a man of unimpeachable integrity, and 
while full of kindly instincts, has the ahilitv to 



say "no," and is inexorable where a question of 
principle is involved. He possesses also the 
faculty of being absolutely loyal to his friends, 
a quality very desirable in a political leader. 
In his private and domestic life, .Mr. Rosing 
is peculiarly happy, his pronounced integrity 
and domestic virtues making this necessarilv 
true." 

When Mr. Lind was inaugurated Governor, 
his appreciation of Mr. Rosing's ability was 
shown by his selection as private secretary 
to the Governor. Coming to the State Capitol, 
a comparative stranger to the people of St. 
Paul, he has, by his ability, tact and good judg- 
ment, won the confidence and esteem of busi- 
ness men, regardless of party. Mr. Rosing has 
taken an active part in masonry since 1885. 
This is the only secret society of which he is 
a member. In 1880 Mr. Rosing was married to 
Miss May Belle Season, daughter of Mr. John 
Season, an early settler of Minnesota, and a 
resident of Cannon Falls since 1855. To Mr. 
and Mrs. Rosing have been born three children 
— George Leonard, aged twelve; Marguerite, 
nine, and Willis Season, three. 



GEORGE M. SMITH. 



George M. Smith, general agent for the Chi- 
cago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Rail- 
road at Duluth, was born in Jefferson county, 
Wisconsin, August 25, 1850. His father, J. 
Tatman Smith, a native of Ohio, was a mer- 
chant by occupation. He is descended on the 
paternal side from Pocahontas, the Virginia 
Indian princess of historic renown, and his 
maternal ancestors were from Canada. His 
early education was obtained in the public 
schools of Superior, Wisconsin, which he at- 
tended up to his seventeenth year. Mr. Smith 
began his business career when quite young 
as a clerk at very small wages in a general 
store at Superior, where he was employed for 
about three years. In the fall of 1869 he came 
to Duluth and remained a year. Returning to 
West Superior, he engaged in business for him- 
self in a grocery and provision store, which he 
conducted for about five vears. In the fall of 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



441 



1ST4, he returned to Duluth and continued in 
the grocery trade until in the winter of L881, 
when he engaged to supply the Chicago, Port- 
age and Superior Railroad and Constructing 
Company with all of their supplies and the 
ecpiipment of the road in the construction de- 
partment. The company failed, and all of Mr. 
Smith's accumulations for twelve years or 
more were swept away. He then engaged in 
railroading with the Chicago, St. Paul, Minne- 
apolis and Omaha, and was appointed general 
agent for that company, his present position. 
He has discharged his duties efficiently and has 
come to be one of the best known railroad men 
in the Northwest. An incident in Mr. Smith's 
life which he well remembers was the bringing 
of the great capitalist and speculator, Jay 
Cooke, from Superior to Duluth on the occa- 
sion of Mr. Cooke's first visit to the cities at 
the head of the lakes. The same year Mr. 
Smith took the first corps of engineers from 
Superior that made the preparatory survey 
around the Falls of St. Louis for the old Lake 
Superior and Mississippi Railroad — which is 
now the St. Paul and Duluth. When George 
B. Sargent — whose biography appears else- 
where in this volume — came to Duluth to begin 
his extensive and valuable operations in the 
city, Mr. Smith was his guide and advisor. For 
about three months he accompanied Mr. Sar- 
gent, the greater part of the time in a row boat 
on the lake, on his tour of investigation in aud 
about the city. He gave the great investor 
much valuable information concerning impor- 
tant building sites and helped him in other 
ways when he began his work of building up 
Duluth. Mr. Smith witnessed the location of 
the two big hotels constructed by .Mi'. Sargent. 
the first of the kind built in Duluth. Mr. Smith 
has always had a liking for and faith in his 
adopted city. He has done what he could and 
has been willing to do more in promoting its 
interests. He is and has always been a staunch 
Republican in politics, is a member of the Ma- 
sonic order, and is a worthy and popular citi- 
zen. He was married at Norwalk, Ohio, Sep- 
tember 28, 1875, to Miss Fannie B. Brown, a 
daughter of Edwin H. Brown, Esq. Three chil- 
dren have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Smith — 



two sons ami a daughter, all of whom are 
living. .Mr. and Mrs. Smith are communicants 
of the First Presbyterian Church of Duluth. 



ANSEL L. HILL. 



The laic Ansel L. Hill, of Faribault, Minne- 
sota, was born of English parents in Williams- 
burgh, Hampden county, -Massachusetts, on the 
2nd of April, 1830. Fourteen months after his 
birth his father died, and his mother (whose 
maiden name was .Magdalene Siinason) reared 
the boy in his native town, sending him to the 
neighboring common schools. At sixteen he 
began to learn the machinist's trade al Hay 
denville, Massachusetts, and was afterwards 
employed for a short time in the Ames estab- 
lishment at Chico] When about eighteen 

years of age— in 1*48— he came west to F 1 

du Lac, Wisconsin, where he started the pio- 
neer machine shop of the place, operated by 
horse power. Early in 1852 he went to Califor- 
nia, where he sojourned for some two years, 
making the round trip by water. Upon his re- 
turn to Fond du Lac, he followed the lumber 
trade for about a year, then, in 1855, came to 
Minnesota and established himself in the man- 
ufacture of furniture, in which business he 
continued in Faribault during the remainder 
of his life, and was sole proprietor of the A. L. 
Hill Manufactory, lie began on an humble 
scale, on Willow street, his motor being a sin- 
gle blind horse on a tread wheel, and but one 
mechanic being employed. In 18C8 he trans 
ferred his plant to a larger building on the 
coiner of Willow and Third streets, introduced 
steam power and facilities for over twenty op- 
eratives. In 1S72 this property was completely 
destroyed by lire; but, undismayed, Mr. Hill 
rebuilt almost immediately, the ill-fated estab- 
lishment being in six months succeeded by a 
much larger one, substantially built of brick 
and furnished with a greatly improved equip- 
ment. Again, on December 30, 1880, his 
premises were devastated, the engine house 
alone being preserved intact. The loss involved 
in the second fire was about $35,000, and sixty 
men were thrown out of employment. But, 



446 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



still undaunted, Mr. Hill proceeded to erect the 
present works, which stand as a stalwart tes- 
timonial to his business energy and courage 
and his faith in the future. It would be im- 
possible to estimate the benefit which Fari- 
bault has realized from the citizenship of A. 
L. Hill. His loyalty to the city of his adoption 
was proverbial, and his enthusiasm for her fu- 
ture contagious. Although harassed by the 
fire fiend, his indomitable perseverance and 
business sagacity were rewarded by a hand- 
some fortune; but he was deaf to every over- 
ture of speculative venture outside of his 
beloved city, investing all his surplus funds in 
enterprises contemplating her advancement. 
He was probably a larger owner of city real 
estate than any other resident of Faribault. 
Among the noblest monuments to his enter- 
prise may be mentioned his fine business block 
on Main street, of which the third story was 
finished as an opera house, and for years fur- 
nished the citizens with a superbly-equipped 
place of entertainment; also the three-story 
Union block, with its spacious auditorium, 
erected by Mr. Hill and W. D. Fox, jointly. Mr. 
Hill was a staunch Republican, but he had no 
aspirations for public life, being wholly de- 
voted to business achievement. He was eco- 
nomical and provident, and possessed a deter- 
mination that no ordinary calamity could 
thwart. During the three or four years of 
business depression following the panic of 
1893, at some period of which nearly every 
furniture factory in the country was sus- 
pended, Mr. Hill's establishment was not shut 
down for a single week day, and his employes 
invariably received their pay on Saturday 
night. Apart from his principal business, Mr. 
Hill also conducted an undertaker's establish- 
ment during nearly his entire residence in Fari- 
bault, this being for many years the only one 
in the place. Mr. Hill was twice married. The 
first wife, Betsey Miller, whom he married in 
1SG0 at Springfield, Massachusetts, died nine 
years later; and in 1872 he was united to 
Cornelia J. Gifford, daughter of Ezra D. and 
Lydia Ann Gifford, pioneer settlers of Fari- 
bault. Mr. Hill's death occurred on February 
21, 1897, and, after impressive services, the 



body was laid at rest in Maple Low cemetery, 
of the corporation controlling which the de- 
ceased had for many years been treasurer and 
an active manager. He leaves no children, 
but Mrs. Hill survives him, also two sisters, 
viz.: Mrs. A. Root, of Northampton, Massa- 
chusetts, and Mrs. Leach, of Oshkosh, Wiscon- 
sin. Mr. and Mrs. Hill attended the Episcopal 
church, and were among its most substantial 
supporters, contributing, also, generously but 
with discrimination, to many other institutions 
and enterprises. Mr. Hill's loss is the regret 
of a wide circle of friends in Rice county, who 
remember him as a leader in the progress of 
Faribault, and a man whose character, com- 
mercial and private, was beyond reproach. He 
was a man of thoroughly domestic habits, and 
his memory abides in the lives of those who 
knew him most intimately as a true and gra- 
cious presence. 



JOSEPH B. COTTER. 



Rt. Rev. Joseph Bernard Cotter, D. D., Bish- 
op of the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota, was 
born in Liverpool, England, November 19, 1844. 
He is the son of Lawrence P. and Anne Mary 
(Perrin) Cotter. The family came to America 
in 1850, and located at Cleveland, Ohio, where 
they remained for about five years. In the 
autumn of 1855 they removed to St. Paul, 
Minnesota. The father of Bishop Cotter was a 
journalist by profession, and during his resi- 
dence in St. Paul served for several terms as 
city clerk. He was the incumbent of that office 
at the time of his death in 1862. The funda- 
mental education of Bishop Cotter was ob- 
tained in private academies in the cities of 
Cleveland and Freemont, Ohio, and after the 
removal to St. Paul he continued his studies 
in the Cathedral school of that city. Later on 
he went to Pennsylvania and entered St. Vin- 
cent's College, and on completing the work for 
which he had gone thither, he returned to Min- 
nesota and was for a time a student at St. 
John's College. The latter two institutions he 
attended for classical, philosophical and theo- 
logical courses. On May 21, 1871, in the Cathe- 





taXtt 





~^ 



■ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



447 



dral of St. Paul, onr subject was ordained 
priest by Rt. Rev. Thomas Langdou Grace, D. 
D., aud on June 9th following he assumed 
charge, by virtue of official appointment, of St. 
Thomas' church, in Winona, Minnesota, of 
which city he in that month became, and lias 
since remained, a resident. From his church 
in Winona as center, he attended the missions 
of St. Charles, Lewiston, Ridgway and Hart, 
up to the year 1882. In 1872 he founded the 
Father Mathew Society of Winona; and sub- 
sequently was for several years president of 
the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of Amer- 
ica, for which organization, in 1887, he did 
duty in the capacity of lecturer, visiting for 
this purpose some of the leading cities of tin- 
States of New York, Massachusetts, Connec- 
ticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Wisconsin aud Minnesota, and secur- 
ing, as a gratifying result of his labors, about 
sixty thousand pledges of total abstinence. In 
1889 he was elected Bishop of Winona; and, 
December 27, of the same year, in the Cathe- 
dral of St. Paul, he was consecrated first Bish- 
op of Winona by Archbishop John Ireland, as- 
sisted by Archbishop Grace and Bishop Marty. 
The diocese over which Bishop Cotter presides 
embraces (lie two southern tiers of counties of 
Minnesota, together with Wabasha county on 
the third tier. This diocese, which on the date 
of its erection, in the year 1889, comprised 
forty-five priests, eighty churches, two acade- 
mies for girls, twelve parochial schools, one 
industrial school for boys and two hospitals, 
has had a rapid growth, and shows a present 
status of seventy priests, one hundred and 
twenty churches, and fifteen chapels, three 
academies for young ladies, twenty parochial 
schools — furnishing education to about four 
thousand children — three hospitals and an or- 
phan asylum; and its total membership ex- 
ceeds forty-five thousand souls. 



DONALD GRANT. 



Donald Grant, of Faribault, president of the 
Orinoco Company, and for many years well 
known for his conspicuous part in the railroad 



construction of (he Northwest, was born De 
cember in, L837, in Glengary county, Ontario. 
He is the son of Alexander B. and Catherine 
(Cameron) Grant, both Scotch Bighlanders, 
and his father served for thirty years as sheriff 
of Glengary county. Donald grew up on lie 
home farm, surrounded by some of the mosl 
picturesque of Canadian scenery, and attended 
the neighboring school to the age of nineteen. 
In 1857 lie came over to the United Stales and 
engaged as a farm hand in Ohio, lie worked 
industriously and proved the truth of I lie old 
adage: "Take care of the pennies and (lie dol- 
lars will take care of themselves." In due time 
he returned to his home in Ontario with sev- 
eral hundred dollars of his earnings, but dis- 
covered too late that the money was the issue 
of "wild-cat" hanks which had already failed. 
But undaunted, he returned to Ohio, after a 
two-months' visit at home, and resumed his 
rural occupations, gradually working into the 
business of stock-trading. In 1863, his health 
having become undermined, he soughl (he in- 
vigorating air of Minnesota, securing employ- 
ment on a farm in the out skirls of Faribault. 
Here his health improved rapidly, and in L864 
he entered upon his remarkable career in rail- 
road construction. His first contract was for 
applying lies on the .Minnesota Central — now 
the Iowa & Minnesota division of the .Milwau- 
kee road; and for twelve years he was em- 
ployed upon some part of the Chicago, Mil- 
waukee & St. Paul system, this lengthy period 
being followed by a shorter one on the Wiscon- 
sin Central. In 1881, in company with Lang- 
don, Shepard & Company, he began the Cana- 
dian Pacific, constructing the first 1,066 miles 
of continuous line westward from Winnipeg to 
the summit of the Rocky mountains. This 
strenuous task accomplished, he worked upon 
minor lines until April, 1887, between which 
date and the 27th of November following, to- 
gether with Shepard, Winston & Company, 
he extended the line of the Great Northern 
from Minot, North Dakota, to Helena, Mon- 
tana, a distance of about seven hundred miles 
— the most rapid construction on record. In 
1890 he organized a company for an English 
syndicate and ran a line of 21(1 miles from 



44 8 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Montana to Lethbridge, in the British north 
west territory. The Duluth & Winnipeg and 
1 he Missabe, also, besides numerous other lines, 
he has assisted in constructing. For over thir- 
ty years Mr. Grant has been engaged in this 
work, the first half of this time with varying, 
the last half with unvarying and remarkable 
success. Many of his lines he has threaded 
through vast forests, making openings into 
which civilization has quickly pressed. The 
wilderness and the frontier are familiar scenes 
to him, and he knows well the meaning of the 
phrase "roughing it." The thrift and economy 
which he found so necessary at the outset he 
has practiced all along the way, and these 
habits, combined with his rare business sagac- 
ity have enabled him to accumulate a large 
fortune. This fortune he has invested freely 
in a variety of enterprises, not a few of which 
have contemplated the advancement of his 
home city. The opera house of Faribault, the 
canning works, driving park and the boot and 
shoe manufactory, are among the enterprises 
which he has substantially promoted. He is a 
director of the Citizens' National Bank of Fari- 
bault, and is president, also, of two banking 
institutions in South Dakota. Mr. Grant be- 
longs to the Republican party, but he has been 
too much absorbed in his chosen industry of 
railroading to feel strongly the attractions of 
public life. Although never seeking office, he 
has, however, served two terms — 18112 and 1893 
— as mayor of Faribault, being the unanimous 
choice of the citizens without reference to 
party sympathy; and this general confidence, 
which he inspires also in the business world, 
has been one of the factors determining his 
success. Although so prosperous in the main, 
Mr. Grant's career has not been wholly without 
vicissitudes. He was at one time heavily inter- 
ested in a flouring establishment, which him- 
self and a partner had built, but owing to the 
excessive expenditure necessitated by the 
introduction of the roller system, which was at 
that time replacing more primitive methods of 
milling, the enterprise proved a failure, Mr. 
Grant's share of the loss amounting to one hun- 
dred thousand dollars. Soon after his return 
to railroad construction, however, he was able 



to cancel all liabilities incurred in the hapless 
venture. Mr. Grant is the most prominent fig- 
ure connected with the splendid Venezuelan 
concession to the Orinoco Company, Limited, 
being not only president of the company, but 
principal proprietor in the concession. He is 
also president of the Rio Verde Canal Com- 
pany of Arizona, in which, likewise, he holds a 
large proprietary interest. The Orinoco Com- 
pany is capitalized at $30,000,000; the Rio 
Verde Company at $3,600,000. The latter en- 
terprise contemplates the building of a dam 
to reservoir water from the mountains su In- 
dent to irrigate the greater portion of the 450,- 
000 acres of land acquired by the company. 
December 25, 1800, Mr. Grant was married 
to Mary Cameron, daughter of Samuel Camer- 
on, of Kingston, Ontario. Seven children have 
been born to them, of whom two daughters, 
Mary and Margaret Jane, are deceased. The 
only son, Samuel, has for years assisted his 
father in railroad construction, and is a promi- 
nent business man of Faribault. There are four 
living daughters, viz.: Ella (Mrs. N. S. Erb, of 
Faribault), Isabella (Mrs. H. H. Batcheler, of 
New York City), Catherine and Emma, who 
reside at home. 



JOHN H. NILES. 



John H. Niles, one of the most successful 
lawyers of Anoka, Minnesota, was born in Al- 
bany county. New York, November 22, 1857. 
His father, John H. Niles, senior, of whom he 
is the namesake, was also a native of the Em- 
pire State, who died when the subject of this 
sketch was a child of four years. John II., 
junior, was reared in the State of his birth, 
attended the common schools, and later the 
high school, of the city of Albany, then went 
to New Hampshire and became a student at 
Dartmouth College. He took a classical course, 
and graduated from the institution in 18S0. 
Upon leaving college, he returned to Albany 
and read law for two years in the office of 
Hand, Hole & Bradley, a prominent legal firm 
of that city. Soon after he came west, and 
took a course of instruction in the Law De- 




The Century PuMishinq <1 Engrcvmy Co Chicayer 




J^Uji 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



449 



parturient of the University of Iowa. After 
obtaining his degree at the university, he came 
to Minneapolis and practiced liis profession for 
a short time. During the summer of ISSo he 
located in Anoka, announced his professional 
capacity, was immediately recognized as an 
enterprising and thorough young lawyer, and 
soon found himself established in a lucrative 
and growing practice. In connection with the 
regular duties of his profession, he adopted, as 
a side issue, the specialty of abstracting titles; 
and the demand for his services in this line 
increased until his work as an abstract attor- 
ney formed an important and profitable de- 
partment of his business. Indeed, for many 
years he has had the exclusive control of the 
abstracting for Anoka county. The political 
views of Mr. Niles are Democratic, in the larger 
sense of the word — he is a Democrat in prin- 
ciple rather than in party prejudice. He has 
entertained no aspirations towards public 
office, but he is always ambitious to see the 
high places of the land filled with men of high 
ability and character. Mr. Niles is a thorough- 
going business man, and in the prime of life 
possesses a handsome competency; but he is 
also a man of kindly impulses and deeds, and 
while traveling the road of financial success 
he has made warm friends all along the way. 
Mr. Niles was married, on November 22, 18S7, 
at Anoka, to Miss Zole Ticknor, a daughter of 
H. L. Ticknor, of that city. One child has been 
born to Mr. and Mrs. Niles. 



WILLIAM E. TODD. 



Hon. William Elmir Todd, of Albert Lea, a 
well known public man of southern Minnesota, 
was born at Geneva, Kane county, Illinois, Au- 
gust 14, 1853, and died at Mankato, Minnesota, 
November 11, 189!). His sudden and untimely 
death was a great shock to his legion of friends, 
and a great loss to the community and the 
State. Mr. Todd was in the prime of his man- 
hood and his usefulness, and he was, withal, 
a man of strong parts and rare accomplish- 
ments, a brilliant lawyer, a faithful public offi- 
cial and a knightly gentleman. His father, 



Rev. Miles G. Todd, was a LTniversalist minis 
ter, born at Homer, New York, and descended 
from Scotch-Irish ancestors who were early 
settlers of New York State. Before her mar- 
riage, his mother was Helen M. Parker, and 
she was also a native of New York State. 
Reverend and .Mis. Todd were married 
in Illinois, in September, 1852. In 1855 they 
moved to Wisconsin, first locating at Merri- 
mac, and two years later at Lodi. On his re- 
moval to Lodi, Mr. Todd began teach- 
ing, but later was called to the pastorate 
of the LTniversalist church. While in the 
ministry at Mazomanie, he entered the 
army as chaplain, and served until the close 
of thi' war. After his discharge he returned 
to Mazomanie, and for the next twenty years 
was in charge of the Universalis! church, suc- 
cessively at Columbus, < >shkosh, Columbus 
again, and Lodi. II,- died suddenly of hemor- 
rhage of the brain at Mason City, Iowa, in 
1888. William E. Todd was naturally a stu- 
dent and of scholarly tastes. After attending 
the high school at Columbus, Wisconsin, he, in 
1869, entered the Jefferson Liberal Institute, 
a Universalis! school at Jefferson, Wisconsin, 
where he remained two years, paying his way 
through school by outside work. He taught 
country schools in 1871 and 1872, and in the 
spring of the latter year entered the Wiscon- 
sin State University. The next fall, however, 
he left the university, returned to the Jefferson 
Institute, and taught Latin and mat hematics 
in that institution; the follow-big year he 
taught in the town of York. In the fall of 1871 
he again entered the University of Wisconsin, 
taking a modem classical course, and grad 
uated with honors in 1877. While in college 
he was noted for his proficiency in Latin and 
history, and a portion of the time he was assist- 
ant instructor in chemistry. A few months 
after his graduation .Mr. Todd assumed the 
principalship of the public schools at Lodi, 
Wisconsin, and in connection with his school 
work began the study of law. February 22. 
1880, he married Miss Alice I. Coapman. who 
was at the time a teacher in the Lodi schools. 
The following summer he entered the law office 
of A. J. Cook, Esq., of Columbus. Wisconsin, 



45° 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



and continuing his legal studies for a year, was 
then admitted to the bar at Portage. In the 
fall of 1881 Mr. Todd removed to Albert Lea 
and formed a law partnership with the late 
Judge E. C. Stacy. His total income the first 
year was only about four hundred dollars, but 
his ability and application to business were 
recognized and appreciated, and his business 
increased in due time. He continued in part- 
nership with Judge Stacy for about two years. 
when lie became associated with the late Judge 
John Whytock. This association was dissolved 
in a comparatively short time, and thereafter 
Mr. Todd engaged in the practice on his own 
account, until L897, when he formed a partner- 
ship with Henry 0. Carlson, under the Arm 
name of Todd & Carlson. Mr. Todd early be- 
came prominently identified with the interests 
of Albert Lea. He had not been in the city 
very long when he became a member of the 
school board, and was its clerk for fifteen 
years, retiring in 1897, after positively declin- 
ing a re-election. Though this position was not 
at all remunerative or distinguished, he re- 
garded it as a place of high responsibility and 
one of great honor and trust. He would not 
have exchanged it for any other position with- 
in the bestowal of his fellow citizens, and he 
did not retire from it until, largely by his ef- 
forts and influence, the schools were running 
under a perfect system, and his increasing per- 
sonal duties made it imperative upon him to 
resign the routine work to others. In 1886, 
after serving two terms as city attorney of 
Albert Lea, he was elected county attorney 
of Freeborn county; he was re-elected in 1888, 
holding the office for two terms. It is needless 
to say that his service in both positions was 
most faithful and of the highest proficiency. 
He was not an office seeker, or he might have 
become distinguished in public positions. 
For he was an enthusiastic Republican and 
took an active interest in the affairs of his 
party, wdiich during his residence in Minnesota 
was dominant in Freeborn county and the 
State. He was frequently a delegate to his 
party's conventions, often took part in political 
campaigns, was a noted public speaker, and at 
the time of his death was an executive member 



of the Republican State Committee. Rut Mr. 
Todd's chief ambition was to excel in his 
chosen profession of the law. As he grew in 
it, its governing principles fascinated him, and 
he was a student until the hour of his death. 
He literally "died in the harness," being strick- 
en down by apoplexy while in the Federal 
court room at Mankato, engaged in the trial of 
a case. Mr. Todd had secured a large clientage 
and a lucrative practice; was the attorney for 
numerous business firms and associations, a 
number of railroad corporations, and had an 
extensive general practice as well. He was a 
prominent member of the State Bar Associa- 
tion, and for three successive years this or- 
ganization sent him as a delegate to annual 
conventions of the National Bar Association. 
A brother lawyer thus describes Mr. Todd's 
professional character: 

"His knowledge of the law was reinforced by 
an almost intuitive understanding of human 
nature, and these qualifications were the real 
foundation of his success as a practitioner in 
the District and Supreme Courts of Minnesota, 
Wisconsin and South Dakota. His analytic 
mind rarely failed to discover the flaws in the 
testimony of a witness or the weakness in the 
argument of an opposing counsel, and his ear- 
nest manner and persuasive voice impressed 
the logic of his case upon the hearer with con- 
vincing force. The office of county attorney 
made him acquaintances, and his practice grew 
rapidly until he not only represented almost 
every important business interest in Freeborn 
county, but was often called to far distant 
points to conduct important cases. He always 
tried his cases promptly and fairly. Despite 
his liberal donations to charity and public en- 
terprises, his expenditures in the purchase of 
a large and valuable law and private library, 
etc., his accumulations were considerable, and 
he left a comfortable estate." 

The personal qualities of William Elmir 
Todd were most striking. He was a man of at- 
tractive presence, bright, spirited and debonair. 
His large warm heart matched his active, intel- 
ligent brain. From his boyhood his character 
was pure and noble. As has been stated, Mr. 
Todd was married February 22, 1S80, to Miss 
Alice I. Coapman. Mrs. Todd and her daugh- 
ter, Liela, are living in Albert Lea. Other 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



45' 



surviving members of Mr. Todd's family are 
Iris mother, Mrs. Helen M. Todd; two sisters, 
Mrs. Eugene C. Chrisler, of Albert Lea, and 
Mrs. Eenry Mead, of Shell Lake, Wisconsin; 
also four brothers — Charles, Lewellyn and Wil- 
lard Todd, of Merrimac, Wisconsin, and Miles 
Todd, of Thief River Falls. Minnesota. 



CLARENDON I). BELDEN. 

In (his cosmopolitan age, few of our citizens 
are able to trace so extended and so honorable 
an American lineage as is Mr. C. 1). Belden, 
of Austin, Minnesota. He is a Yankee of the 
mosl thoroughbred type, the family stock on 
both sides being a distinctively New England 
production, and the paternal and maternal 
genealogies together including four Revolu- 
tionary soldiers and three of the Mayflower 
pilgrims, viz.: John Alden, George Soule and 
Richard Warren. The parents of Clarendon D. 
were Stanton and Antoinette (Manchester) Bel- 
den. and his paternal grandmother — Prudence 
Ann Sholes. of Groton, Connecticut, was the 
daughter of Nathan Sholes, a patriot of the 
Revolution who was killed while defending 
Port Griswold. Stanton Belden was a native 
of Massachusetts, horn and reared in Saudis 
held. He graduated from Yale College with 
the class of 1833. and was for thirty live years 
principal of the Fruit Hill Classical Seminary 
near Providence, Rhode Island. Antoinette 
Percival Manchester was, also, a native of the 
Old Bay Stale, Fall River being her early 
home; and the Manchester lineage is directly 
traceable to Benjamin Church, distinguished 
in King Philip's war as commander of the Hi- 
de force by which the chief was slain. Claren- 
don Dwight Belden was horn on May ::, 1848, 
at Fruit Hill, above referred to as the location 
of his father's academy, and aptly named, since 
I he hill comprised a line fruit farm of some ten 
acres. Here the boy grew up, acquiring the 
rudiments of his education in the home insti- 
tute and at Lyons University Grammar School, 
Providence. Rhode Island. In LS64 he matricu- 
lated for a classical course at Brown Univer- 
sity, from which institution he graduated with 



the degree of It. A. in 1868, the higher degree 
of M. A. being subsequently conferred upon 
him by his Alma Mater. In college he became 
a member of each of the Greek letter fraterni- 
ties—Delta Upsilon and Phi Beta Kappa. 
Young Belden inherited his father's taste and 
aptitude for pedagogy, and on leaving college 
he accepted a position as principal of a New 
England graded village school, which he filled 
for three years. He then became a student at 
the Crozer Theological Seminary at Upland, 
Pennsylvania. He graduated here in 1874, and 
in May of the same year was ordained by a 
council assembled by I he Memorial Baptist 
church of Philadelphia. Tn the following au- 
tumn he came to Minnesota, locating as pastor 
at Austin. For seven and a half years he 
labored in this held, and with gratifying re- 
sults; but in the spring of 1882, he resigned his 
pastorate to assume new duties as superin- 
tendent of schools of Mower county, having 
been elected in the preceding November. This 
post he filled until the beginning of 1891. and 
during the nine years of his incumbency he 
developed a complete graded system in the 
district schools of the county, meantime serv- 
ing for one year as president of the Minnesota 
County Superintendents' Association. In Oc- 
tober, 1891, Mr. Belden responded to a sum- 
mons to the Baptist church in Windom, 
Minnesota, and during the year that he 
officiated as pastor of the congregation its new 
meetinghouse was finished and dedicated and 
a heavy debt liquidated. The fall of 1892 found 
him again in Austin, to enter upon his duties 
as associate editor of the Mower County 
Transcript, in which he purchased a half in- 
terest a year later. In December, 1898, he 
acquired full proprietorship of the paper, to 
tin' management of which he now devotes the 
greater part of his time. The Transcript is 
one of the leading Republican newspapers of 
Southern Minnesota, but Mr. Belden is a man 
of very broad and liberal views, and is an 
earnest worker in (he cause of non-partisan 
municipal reform and the kindred one of im 
proved citizenship. Mr. Belden has done much 
to promote the editorial associational move- 
ment, having been for a number of years the 



452 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Minnesota member of the executive committee 
of the National Editorial Association. Mr. 
Belden lias also written much for religious 
publications. In fact, during the past twenty 
years lie has contributed frequently and richly 
to both the secular and the religious press. 
Mr. Belden is a man of many-sided capability. 
lie was one of those who. in 1893, organized 
the Austin Co-operative Creamery Association, 
of which lie became and still continues general 
manager. Along this same line he did duty 
in ls'.is as president of the Minneapolis Dairy 
Hoard of Trade, and in the present year of 
1900 he has been elected vice-president for 
Minnesota of the National Buttermakers' As- 
sociation. And Mr. Belden has everywhere 
and always been deeply interested in educa- 
tional work. As clerk of the Austin board of 
education he has done good service, and he 
has. lor a number of years, acted on the exani- 
ining board. Willi all his other interests he 
has kept in close touch with the activities of 
the Baptist denomination, laboring in his office 
of clergyman as opportunity has permitted. 
tmleed, in his capacities of educator, progres- 
sive journalist and spiritual guide, he has been 
a three-fold blessing to his community. On 
June 27, 1ST", Mr. Belden was married to Mrs. 
Francelia L. Crandall, of Austin. They have 
a daughter, born to them on June 24, 1882, 
named Antoinette Griffith Belden. Our sub- 
ject is a Royal Arch Mason, and much devoted 
to the order. He is also past chancellor com- 
mander of the Knights of Pythias. 



ROBEUT REED. 



This family of Reed is easily traceable to a 
Scotch-English ancestry, although the imme- 
diate progenitors of our subject were born in 
this country, his great-grandfather having 
served under the American Hag in the War of 
1812. His father devoted (he greater part of 
his life to agriculture, and died in Iowa in the 
year L855. Robert Reed, who is a native of 
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, was barely ten years 
of age at the time of his father's decease, the 
dale of his birth having been March 2, 1845; 



and thus early orphaned, he was constrained 
to put aside childish things and look out upon 
life through the serious eyes of responsible 
years. Previous to his father's death, and for 
a year or two afterwards, he attended the dis- 
trict schools of Iowa. He then obtained em- 
ployment, at five dollars a week, which 
occupied him for a year. When the Rebellion 
broke out, he enlisted, although but fifteen 
years of age, in the Fourteenth Iowa Regiment 
of Infantry, from which he was subsequently 
transferred to the Forty second Iowa Regi- 
ment. Upon the expiration of his term of 
service he re-enlisted in the Seventh Iowa 
Cavalry, with which he did duty on the west- 
ern plains in protecting the lives and property 
of the frontier settlers against the Indians. 
Thus at a time of life when so many youths, 
within the shelter of the parental roof, are 
amusing themselves with thrilling tales of In- 
dian warfare, young Reed was experiencing its 
actual perils and strife. He took part in many 
hard skirmishes, and in numerous instances 
accomplished the rescue of men or women who 
had been taken captive by the redmen. At 
length he was made assistant quartermaster, 
in which capacity he displayed such ability 
that he was promoted to a clerkship in the 
paymaster's department of the Northwest. 
This post he retained until June 4, 1800, when 
he was honorably discharged by the Govern- 
ment, after five years of loyal service. He re- 
turned to his home in Iowa City, Iowa, and in 
August of the following year he removed to 
Minneapolis and engaged in the jewelry 
business, which he conducted for many 
years. Later on he established the whole- 
sale jewelry firm of Reed & Daily, which 
was subsequently modified, by the admittance 
of a new partner, to Reed. Daily & Betman. 
After five years of successful operation the 
firm was incorporated as the Reed-Deman 
Jewelry Manufacturing Company. Eventually 
Mr. Reed withdrew from this corporation and 
established a new wholesale house — the Reed- 
Bennett Company — which does a flourishing 
business, and is well known throughout the 
Northwest. Mr. Reed is a prominent member 
of the G. A. R., being present commander of 




TTie- Centuiy Publishing &Enjmvinj COChicapo- 




BIOGRArHY OF MINNESOTA. 



453 



the Butler Post, No. !'■>. In politics he is a 
Democrat. On October 18, L873, Mr. Reed was 
married to Miss Julia A. Enke. Of the four 
children born to them, two sous and a daughter 
are living. Mr. and .Mrs. Reed arc members of 
the Methodist Episcopal church. 



ALBERT SCHALLER. 

Hon. Albert Schaller, of Hastings, present 
State Senator from the Thirtieth District of 
.Minnesota, and a well-known lawyer of the 
State, was born in Cook county, Illinois. May 
20, 1856. He is a son of Michael and Barbara 
(Klein) Schaller, and his immediate family is 
of French origin, his father having been born 
at Mittelwihr, in the former French province 
of Alsace. At the time of the French Revolu- 
tion Senator Schaller's grandfather was 
eighteen years of age. lie enlisted in the 
French army and saw his lirst active service 
under Napoleon in the "Army of Italy" when 
the young commander made the memorable 
campaign against the Austrians which first 
established his military fame and reputation. 
Mr. Schaller accompanied the great conqueror 
into the principal capitals of central Europe, 
served with him through the Russian ram 
paign, and finally fought under him at the 
bat lie of Waterloo. Subsequently one of his 
sons enlisted in the French navy, in which he 
served several years, making several long voy- 
ages and crnises, on one of which his ship 
visited the West Tndies. Michael Schaller 
would have been made a soldier had he nor, 
under the French law, been exempt from mili- 
tary duty by reason of the fact that his brother 
was in the navy. When at the close of his 
naval service the sailor brother returned to his 
Alsatian home, he induced the remainder of 
his family to emigrate to America. In 184S 
the senior Mr. Schaller, with his family of 
three sons and a daughter, came to the United 
States and settled in Cook county. Illinois. 
Michael Schaller. the father of the subject here- 
of, had served an apprenticeship in Strasburg 
as a brewer and cooper, but did not engage in 
his vocation at once on coming to this country. 
The year following his arrival, news of the 



discovery of gold in California reached "the 
Slates." and he caught the gold fever. In 1849 
he stalled from New York City on a steam- 
ship for California, by way of Cape Horn. But 
on reaching Savannah, Georgia, certain legal 
proceedings caused the steamer's return to 
New York. Here he embarked on a sailing 
vessel, and after a long and tedious voyage 
around "the Horn," landed in San Francisco. 
He went at once to the gold diggings, and after 
some years' experience in mining and life on 
I he golden coast, acquired considerable wealth. 
He returned to Chicago by way of Panama, 
and in July, 1856, when his son Albert was but 
a few months old, he came to Minnesota and 
located at Hastings. Here he established a 
brewery, the first in the town, and became a 
leading and respected citizen. Michael 
Schaller died at Bastings in 1864. Albeit 
Schaller has lived in Hastings since his 
father came to the place in 1s.' P ii. His 
early education was received in the Hastings 
public schools. Subsequently he attended St. 
Vincent's College, at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, 
from which institution he graduated in 1870. 
In 1871, during the last months of the Franco- 
Prussian war, and in 1872-73, he was a student 
at St. Hypolite, in France. In 1873 he re- 
turned to Hastings, and for two years was 
engaged in his stepfather's store. For a short 
time he was engaged in the newspaper busi- 
ness. He then began the study of law in the 
office of Claggett & Searles. In 1S77 he went 
to the St. Louis Law School, from which he 
was graduated in 1879. The same year he was 
admitted to the bar at Hastings. At the en- 
suing fall election he was elected county 
attorney of Dakota county, and held the office 
for two years, or until January, 1801; there- 
after, until 1899, he was city attorney of 
Hastings; from 1895 to 1899 he was also city 
attorney of South St. Paul. It is remarkable 
that while holding his first official position, 
that of county attorney of Dakota county. Mr. 
Schaller. although fresh from school, and with- 
out much practical experience as a lawyer, 
made an unusually good record. One of his 
official duties was the prosecution of criminal 
cases, and of thirteen such cases tried in Janu 



15! 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



ary, 1880, he secured convictions in eleven, and 
in the two other rases the accused pleaded 
guilty. In 1894 he was elected to the State 
Senate from the Twenty-fourth Senatorial Dis- 
trict, and was re-elected in 1898, still holding 
the position. Although a Democrat, as he has 
always been since he became a voter, and the 
Legislatures in which he served were very 
largely Republican, no other member had more 
influence in them, or made a better record 
generally, than Senator Schaller. He was the 
leading and master spirit in securing the loca- 
tion of the Hospital for the Insane at Hast- 
ings. He was the author of the bill providing 
for normal instruction in the public schools. 
and an influential champion of the school 
teachers- certificate bill, lie was invariably on 
the side of the people, as against the corpora- 
tions, and was largely instrumental in putting 
through the Senate the pine lands bill and the 
present insurance code, including the valued 
policy act. Senator Schaller is an able lawyer, 
well versed in the principles and practice of 
the law. and effective as an advocate. He is 
an accomplished speaker at the bar or on the 
hustings, with a large fund of humor and a 
pleasing style generally. He is of decided 
views and opinions, and a positive character 
throughout. He was married May 24, 1881, to 
Miss Kate E. Meloy, a daughter of John C. 
Meloy, who was a prominent early settler of 
Hastings. Mr. and Mrs. Schaller have four liv- 
ing children, named Rose Marie, Carl A.. 
Josephine M., and Marion E. 



ALEXANDER FA RIBAULT. 

The late Alexander Faribault, founder of 
the town of Faribault, Minnesota, was born in 
Praire dn Chien, Crawford county. Wisconsin, 
June, 1806, but as his certificate of baptism 
bears the same date, and as during life he dis- 
tinctly remembered the latter event, we con 
elude he must have been born as early as 1802 
or ISO:!. His grandfather, Bartholomew Fari- 
bault, came over from Paris, France, to 
Canada, in 1757. as secretary of the French 
army. He was the son of Bernard Faribault 
and Magdalena Hamon, the former of whom 



tilled an honorable position at the Court Royal, 
and an officer in the Royal Huissiers, and died 
in Paris May 8, 1741. Bernard Faribault was 
a highly esteemed gentleman, and his son, 
Bartholomew, was born in Paris, where he was 
notary public. Two years after his arrival in 
Canada, after the defeat of the Canadians by 
the French, in 1759, he went to Berthier, where 
he continued his profession as notary public. 
He was married to a lady by the name of Ver- 
roneau. He died in Berthier, June 20, 
1801, and his wife survived him but ten days. 
They left nine children, the seventh, Jean Bap- 
tiste, being the father of Alexander Faribault. 
He was born at Berthier on the 19th of October, 
1775, married Pelagic Haines, and died on the 
20th of August, 1860, in Torab. When a child 
Alexander was very fond of hunting, and re- 
membered that while on a pigeon hunt, the 
British troops and Indian allies attacked the 
place. This must have been during the War of 
1812. In the spring of 1821, he in company 
with the old trader, P. La Blan, came up the 
Mississippi to the Minnesota river, and the lat- 
ter established a trading post where Le Sueur 
now is. In the fall Mr. Faribault was given the 
escort of two Frenchmen, and returned to the 
.Mississippi at the present site of Hastings and 
traded during the winter. The following 
spring they went to Fort Snelling, which Mr. 
Faribault had visited on his previous trip. 
His father soon after became established on 
Big Island, at Mendota, as a trader, and 
when the Indian chief, Wanata, or Cut Head, 
living where Fort Abercrombie was subse- 
quently built, was wanted at Washington, he 
was dispatched for him, having for companions 
Jo Snelling. son of the Colonel, and two French 
guides. They took a pack horse and made 
the journey on foot, but when arriving there, 
purchased of the Indians a pony, which Jo 
Snelling and Mr. Faribault took turns in riding 
back. The latter was appointed by Major 
Taliaferro, United States agent at Fort Snell- 
ing, and held the office until 1825. He was 
married in the latter year to Miss Elizabeth 
Graham. Her father. Duncan Graham, was 
an ex-army officer, of the Graham and Duncan 
families of Scotland, and her mother, a half- 



■ 



SI 



' -r* 



^ 



V 




ALEXANDER FARIBAULT 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



455 



breed, was a descendant of the earliest ex- 
plorers of Minnesota. The same year of his 
marriage, Mr. Faribault established a trading 
post directly opposite the present city of St. 
Peter, on the Minnesota river bottom, and the 
locality became known as We-we, or Wet 
Land. He lived there in a log house during the 
wmter of 1825-6. As the southern Indians 
desired a nearer trading post, he, with a guide, 
in July, 1826, crossed the Cannon river at the 
present site of Northfleld,and encamped where 
the city of Faribault now stands. He con- 
tinued his journey through the present site 
of Waterville, and about nine miles southeast, 
to a place now known as Okaman, Waseca 
county, where he concluded to locate. He 
marked the place by putting up three stacks 
of hay and returned to Mendota. In the fall 
of 1827, with seven ox carts and seven French 
assistants, he made his way back through the 
wilderness to the post he had selected. He re- 
mained at the post three winters, living at 
Mendota during the summers. In the fall of 
1830, Mr. Faribault erected a trading post at 
Lake Sakata, near where Waterville now is. 
The following fall he moved to the east end of 
the lake in the present town of Morristown, 
Rice county. In is:::?, Mr. Faribault followed 
the Indians south to their hunting grounds, 
locating in the present county of Faribault. 
The place had an Indian name, signifying 
Chained Lakes. He then traded in what is 
now Steele county, where St. Mary's is now 
located. In 1835, he came to the present site 
of Faribault and put up a log house, fifteen 
by twenty-five feet, located on the east side 
of Straight river. Ever since he fusl encamped 
there, in 1826, it had been his intention to se- 
cure the location if the land came into the 
market. He remained al this post during the 
winter months, and lived with his family in 
Mendota during the summer, employing two 
Frenchmen to look after the stock of goods at 
the post. The flat on the west side of the river 
had previously been cultivated by the Indians, 
and Mr. Faribault plowed most of the land 
lying between what is now Willow street and 
the river north of Third street, and planted 
wheat and corn, the Indians receiving the 



benefit, as they would take the wheat from 
the stacks and thresh it in their blankets, to 
all of which they were welcome. Mi'. Fari- 
bault then owned about thirty horses, one hun- 
dred head of cattle, and from twenty to forty 
hogs. In the spring of is.-,:; he employed twelve 

men in cutting timber in the w Is and hauling 

lumber from St. Paul. He, during the summer, 
erected a commodious frame residence, which 
was the first frame building erected in the 
county. Mr. Faribault was a member of the 
Second Legislature in 1851, from the Seventh 
District. After that he would not enter into 
politics, with the exception of helping his old 
friends, General Sibley and Hon. William 
Windom, in their campaigns. He was at one 
time called on by a delegation at Faribault, 
urging him to become a candidate for Repre- 
sentative, but he positively declined, saying his 
experience had demonstrated that political of- 
fice was not to his taste. Mr. Faribault was 
considered a wealthy man for those days, but 
his generosity ruined him financially. The 
panic through the country in 1857 caused him 
heavy losses by the failure of Borup&Oakes in 
St. Paul, in which he, General Sibley and Gen- 
eral Dana were the principal stockholders. 
All his investments in St. Louis, Missouri, and 
the depreciation in land values, of which he 
held considerable, alarmed him, and attempt- 
ing to retrieve himself financially, he entered 
into, the milling business. He built the 
Straight River stone mills, in Faribault, and 
later two others, all of which he operated. 
Mr. Faribault was the father of ten children, of 
whom only three are living, viz.: Daniel, Will- 
iam R. and Alexander Leon. His wife, Eliza- 
beth Faribault, died in Elizabethtown, near 
Fergus Falls, in 1875. Mr. Faribault served in 
the battle of Birch Coulie in 1862. He died in 
Faribault, December 28, 1882. 



JOSEPH B. COTTON. 

Mr. Joseph Bell Cotton, of Duluth, Minne- 
sota, is a native of Indiana, born on a farm 
near Albion, in Noble county, January 6, 1865. 
He is the son of Dr. John and Elizabeth .1. 
(Riddle) Cotton. His parents (who are now 



456 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



deceased) were both unlives of Ohio, and Dr. 
Cotton was a graduate of Rush Medical Col- 
lege, Chicago. On his father's side Joseph 
B. is related to the late Rev. Phillips Brooks, 
D. D., long the distinguished pastor (if Trinity 
church, Boston, Massachusetts. The subject 
of this sketch was reared upon the home farm 
in Indiana, in the work of which he partici- 
pated until sixteen, since which age he has 
made his own way in the world. His educa- 
tion was begun in Hie school of the district in 
which he grew up, and continued in the high 
school at Albion, lie next became a student 
in the Michigan Agricultural and Mechanical 
College, at Lansing; and during his college 
course he distinguished himself by his ora- 
torical gift, being chosen class orator for both 
his junior and senior years, and being, also, 
one of the eight commencement orators se- 
lected by the faculty from the graduating class 
with reference to scholarship and general rank. 
He graduated from this institution, with the 
degree of B. S., in the class of 1886; but being 
offered by his alma mater a position as tutor 
in mathematics, he remained in Lansing for 
two years longer, meantime leading law under 
the direction of Hon. Edwin Willits, then presi- 
dent of the college and a former member of 
Congress from Michigan. June 13, 1888, be- 
fore the Supreme Court of Michigan, Mr. Cot- 
ton was admitted to the bar; and shortly after- 
wards came to Duluth and located for profes- 
sional practice. It was during the heat of the 
Harrison campaign that he arrived in Duluth, 
and, catching the spirit of the occasion, he 
plunged at once into politics, soon becoming 
very popular with the Republican constituency. 
In the fall of 1892 he was nominated by accla- 
mation for Representative from St. Louis. Lake 
and Cook counties, to the Stale Legislature, 
and was duly elected, receiving the heaviest 
ballot of any candidate from that district. A 
strong incentive for entering the Legislature 
was his interest in securing a third judge for 
the Eleventh Judicial District. He accordingly 
introduced the desired measure, and was 
chiefly instrumental in its passage. He also 
took an effectual part in putting through the 
bill which secured the new State capitol, and 



participated with equal force in the defeat 
of the proposed terminal elevator bill. While 
in the House he served on numerous commit- 
tees, including those on the judiciary, munici- 
pal corporation, grain, warehouse, tax and 
tax laws. His power as an orator was brought 
into full play in a fervent and eloquent speech 
which nominated Senator C. K. Davis for re- 
election, and wiin new laurels for himself. In 
189] Mr. Cotton became a member of the law- 
firm of Cotton & Dibbel, recently changed by 
Hie admission of a new member to Cotton, 
Dibbel & Reynolds; and upon the completion 
of his term of office in the State Legislature, 
he accepted the position, which he still holds, 
of attorney for the Duluth. Missabe & North- 
ern Railway Company, and for the Lake Su- 
perior Consolidated Iron Mines. He is also 
vice president and managing owner of the Bes- 
semer Steamship Company, besides being vice 
president of several companies operating mines 
on the Missabe range. For the last three years 
Mr. Cotton's practice has been exclusively in 
the department of corporation law, and he has 
been connected with much important litiga- 
tion, both in this State and in Wisconsin. In 
the case, brought in the United States Circuit 
Court, of McKinley vs. Lake Superior Consoli- 
dated Iron Mines, which involved the McKinley 
mine on the Missabe range, he was one of the 
counsel for the defense, as also in the cele- 
brated case of Meil'itt VS. Rockefeller, which 
developed from mining transactions on the 
Missabe and Gogebic ranges immediately pre- 
ceding and during the financial crisis of 1893, 
and is still pending in the United States courts. 
Mr. Cotton is a Knight Templar and member 
of the Mystic Shrine, having attained to the 
thirty-second degree in Masonry. He also be- 
longs to the order of Elks, and to that of the 
Red Cross of < 'onstantine. Mr. Cotton has been 
married, but has no children. 



SHELDON L. FRAZER. 

Sheldon Lord Frazer, of Duluth. was born 
at Steubenville, Jefferson county. Ohio. Octo- 
ber 8, 184.">. His early education was received 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



457 



in tilt- Cincinnati public schools, which be at- 
tended until he was fifteen years of age. After- 
wards lie was sent to a military school in New 
Jersey. During the War of the Rebellion some 
of the members of this school were received by 
the Government in the military service and 
performed much valuable work without pay. 
Mr. Frazer was one of these patriotic young 
students. Although but a mere youth he 
served his country, during his school vacations, 
in several responsible positions. For a tine 
he was a member of the military staff of Major 
General Irvin McDowell. ruder Colonel 
Weisell, of Ohio, he served with the Union 
forces during General Kirby Smith's raid into 
Kentucky, in 1862, when southern Ohio was 
seriously threatened with Confederate inva- 
sion, and in the summer of 1863 he partici- 
pated in the pursuit of General John Morgan, 
when that bold rebel raider and his rough 
riders and fierce fighters made their raid 
through Ohio. He was also in the second battle 
of Fredericksburg, Virginia, under General 
Sedgwick. In 1865, the year the war closed, 
he was engaged with his father in the whole- 
sale grocery trade in Cincinnati and in 1868 
became a member of the firm. In 1883 he en- 
gaged in the grain business at Toledo. Ohio; 
subsequently he represented the interests of 
Iris firm at Kansas City, Missouri. In the 
spring of 1857, Mr. Frazer located in Duluth as 
the general agent in the Northwest for the 
Diebold Safe and Lock Company, manufactur- 
ers of fire and burglar proof safes. In 1890 lie 
left this position to become receiver of the 
United States land office at Duluth, serving 
until 1895. Subsequently he engaged in his 
present vocation, that of land attorney, in 
which he has been most successful. He has 
participated in the litigation of some of the 
most important land cases ever adjudicated in 
the State, and in his professional specialty 
has attained a reputation that is well nigh 
invaluable. Mr. Frazer is a well and popularly 
known citizen of Duluth. He has been a mem 
ber of the city public school board for two 
years, and takes a prominent part in the active 
affairs of the municipality generally. During 
his residence in Cincinnati he was for two years 



a member of the board of commissioners of 
the Cincinnati Exposition. Mr. Frazer is promi- 
nent in the affairs of various secret orders, 
notably in Free Masonry. In 1866, when he 
had reached his majority, he became a mem 
ber of Magnolia Lodge No. 83, I. ( >. o. F.. ;l t 
Cincinnati, and held certain minor offices in 
the lodge. In 1869 he was one of the charter 
members and the first K. of R. and S.. of Cres- 
cent Lodge, No. 42, of the Knights of Pythias, 
Ohio. In symbolic masonry, he was made a 
Master Mason in Vattier Lodge, No. 386, Cin- 
cinnati. May 21, 1871. Upon locating in Duluth 
he joined Palestine Lod.uc No. Til, in 1888. In 
1889 he organized Ionic Lodge, No. 186, Du- 
luth, and served as secretary until in Decem- 
ber. 1892, when he was elected S. W. In 
December, 1893, he was elected master, and 
for the past five years has been a trustee, and 
for three years chaplain of the lodge. He 
has been a member of the Masonic Veteran 
Association of Minnesota since January 12, 
1893. In 1889. when the Scottish Rite bodies 
were organized in Duluth, he took the degrees 
and was one of the charter members of the 
organization. When Zenith Council, No.:;, was 
instituted — January 2.'!, 1890, — he was elected 
Second Lieutenant, and in 1893 became First 
Lieutenant. October IS. 1893, he was made, 
by the Supreme Council, a Knight Commander 
of the Court of Honor, and October 20, 1899, 
the Council in session at Washington, D. C, 
made him an Inspector General honorary of 
the thirty-third degree, and an honorary mem- 
ber of the Council. He has held various other 
offices in the several bodies of the Rite and 
has taken an active part in its work. Upon 
the organization of the Masonic Library Asso 
rial ion, in 1899, he was made a member of the 
board of control, secretary and librarian, [n 
January, 1893, he became a member of Osman 
Temple of the Mystic Shrine, at St. Paul, and 
since, in January, 1897, has been District Dep 
uty Grand Master. Mr. Frazer was married 
October 2'.), 1S74, to .Miss Elise McDowell 
Backus, of Toledo, Ohio, and they have one 
child, a daughter, named Elisabeth Frazer. 
Mr. and Mrs. Frazer are members of St. Paul's 
Episcopal church at Duluth. 



45§ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Mr. Frazer's father, Aimer Lord Frazer, is 
si ill living. His remote ancestors came to) 
America early in the Seventeenth Century and 
lie is n descendant of the distinguished Eng- 
lish general of his family name. He was born 
;il Columbus, Ohio. January 21, isi'l. His 
mother's maiden name was Betsy Lord. He 
was reared by his step-father, Hon. Benjamin 
Tappan, who was at one time United States 
District Judge for the Eastern District of Ohio 
and subsequently represented the State in 
i he United States Senate. He was educated at 
Kenvon College, Gamhier, Ohio. Adopting 
the profession of civil engineer, he located the 
canals and certain railroad lines in North- 
western Ohio, and a division of the Steuben- 
ville & Indiana Railroad from Newark, Ohio, 
to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, now a part of the 
Pennsylvania system, completing his work in 
railroad surveying on a line now a portion of 
the Chesapeake & Ohio. In 1856, he removed 
to Cincinnati, and became associated with his 
brother in the wholesale grocery trade, con 
tinuing until 1887, when he retired from active 
business. His life record is an enviable 
one. He has been a useful, honorable citizen 
and a "doer of good works" all his days. He 
has been a member of the Episcopal church 
since boyhood and was a senior warden of the 
church for thirty years. For many years lie 
was the superintendent of the Sunday school of 
St. John's church, Cincinnati. A humanitarian 
by nature, he has done his part for the fallen 
ami unfortunate and every worthy charitable 
enterprise has always found in him a promoter 
and a liberal friend. He was president of the 
Humane Society of Cincinnati for a long time. 
A sincere and devout Christian, he has always 
taken a deep interest ant! an active part in re- 
ligious matters. He has been public spirited 
to an eminent extent and offered the original 
resolution in the Cincinnati Chamber of Com 
merce for the establishing of the city's famed 
exposition; he was the tirsl secretary of the 
exposition board of commissioners. Always 
a close student, his mind is well stored and is 
yet clear and active. He is an able and effec- 
tive writer and a recent article from his pen 
on "The Christian Observance of the Opening 



of the Twentieth Century" attracted much 
favorable attention and admiring comment. 
.Mr. Frazer is spending the evening of life at his 
long-time home in Cincinnati. In many per- 
sonal characteristics his son, Sheldon L, re- 
sembles him verv closelv. 



ALLEN F. FERRIS. 



Allen Frank Ferris, president of the First 
National Bank of Brainerd, Minnesota, is a 
native of New York, born at Perrysburg, Cat- 
taraugus county. July 22. 1865. His father. 
William Ferris, was born in Olto, New York, 
Augusl 1, 1827, and secured work in a store at 
Gowanda, New York, when only fifteen years 
old. While living at Gowanda he was married 
to Miss Buelah A. Allen, a native of that place, 
and daughter of Judge Daniel Allen, of the 
District Court. Judge Allen was a prominent 
man in his State, and was once nominated for 
the Governorship, but declined to run. He was 
a native of Massachusetts, and his wife was 
Esther Manley, daughter of Capt. John Man- 
ley, of Connecticut. William Ferris was for 
lift een years agent of the Erie Railroad at 
Perrysburg, New York, and it was at that place 
that his son, Allen, was born, July 22, I860. 
In 1872, Mr. Ferris moved to Minnesota and 
established himself at Brainerd as agent of 
the Northern Pacific Railroad and of the 
United States Express Company. In 1881 he 
organized the First National Bank of Brainerd 
and was president of the bank at the time of 
his death in 1882. Young Allen was only seven 
years old when his parents removed to Minne- 
sota. He attended the common schools at 
Brainerd and took two years at Carleton Col- 
lege at Northfield. In 1885, when twenty years 
of age, he entered the First National Bank as 
teller and during the following year was 
elected cashier. In 1892 he was made presi- 
dent and still occupies that position. Mr. Fer- 
ris has taken a prominent part in the public 
affairs of his city. He was elected an alder 
man in 1891, and was made vice president of 
the city council. In 1892 and 1893 he was re- 
elected. In 1894 he was elected as a member 




Th& Qmtury Pu&Us/wtp & Eru/mvivy Co Chlcapor 




IHOGRAPIIY OF MINNESOTA. 



459 



of the Lower House of the State Legislature. 
He took a very active part in the legislation of 
the ensuing Legislative term, and as chair- 
man of the railroad committee of the House 
of Representatives, was influential in shaping 
important legislation. He was the author of 
the seed bill, which formulated a plan for aid- 
ing the farmers who losl everything by the 
forest fires of 1894, and needed seed for sowing 
in the spring, in order that they might get a 
fresh start. The work of Mr. Ferris in the 
House was rewarded by a re-election in 1896. 
During his third term in the Legislature, he 
was chairman of the joint reapportionment 
committee in the House and Senate, and during 
his last term he was chairman of the railroad 
committee. Governor Merriam appointed Mr. 
Ferris to the Game and Fish Commission in 
1891, and for five years he was secretary of 
that body. Mr. Ferris is president of the Chen- 
quatana Club of Brainerd, vice president of the 
Board of Trade, captain of the Brainerd divi- 
sion, No. 7, U. R. K. P., a member of the 
Masonic body, of the Knights of Pythias and 
of the Improved Order of Red Men. On June 
8, 1888, he was married to Miss Annie M. 
Stegee. They have one child, Frank W. Ferris, 
born June 12, 1S89. 



JONATHAN L. NOYES. 

Jonathan Lovejoy Noyes, A. M., of Fari- 
bault, is from a sturdy stock of New England 
ers whose ancestry may be traced back 
through the mother country to a remote Nor- 
man origin, the present name of Noyes being 
a modification of the Norman Noye. The fam- 
ily was introduced into this country in 1634, 
in the persons of two brothers— Rev. -lames 
and Nicholas Noyes, sons of a clergyman of 
Choulderton, Wiltshire county, England. Rev. 
James Noyes, the elder brother, had been an 
English teacher, educated at Oxford, and pur- 
sued his profession in Newbury, Massachu- 
setts, where he located. The subject of this 
sketch is a lineal descendant of Rev. -lames. 
and a grandson of Moses Noyes. who was a 
soldier of the French and Indian and the Revo 



lutionary wars, having served in the latter as 

orderly sergeant and participated in the fa 
mous conflict at Concord. In 1781 he settled in 
Windham, Rockingham county, New Hamp- 
shire, removing thither from Massachusetts; 
and here, nearly half a century later — on June 
13, 1827 — Jonathan L., of our sketch, was horn. 
the son of James and Abigail (Lovejoy) Noyes. 
He was reared upon the home farm, and at the 
age of fourteen was sent to rhillips Academy, 
Andover, Massachusetts. His father paid his 
way for one year, 1ml felt unable to continue, 
owing to the numerous other demands upon 
him. Besides Jonathan, there were seven other 
children to be provided for, and he had been 
the mainstay of his parents in their declining 
years, paying off a heavy debt which had long 
burdened the old homestead. So Jonathan, 
with a thrift that paralleled his sire's, assumed 
his own support and education. Connecting 
himself with the teachers' seminary at An- 
dover, he arranged for an opportunity to teach 
during three winter terms, spending his sum- 
mers as a farm toiler. Furnished thus with 
funds, he returned to Phillips Academy, where 
he pursued his studies for three years longer. 
His academic course completed, he taught for 
one year in Andover, then, in 1848, entered 
Yale College. He graduated in 1852 and en- 
tered at once upon an engagement to teach at 
Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania Institution 
for the Deaf and Dumb. It was his intention 
later to study for the ministry; but he had 
been forced to incur indebtedness while in col- 
lege, and accepted this position with a view to 
canceling same. His work among the unfortu- 
nates in this institute, however, so enlisted his 
interest and sympathies that he resolved to 
make their instruction and culture his life 
work. For six years he taught in Philadelphia, 
then for two years— 1858 to 1800— in a similar 
institution at Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Mean- 
time the anti-slavery protest was stirring up 
a feeling in the South which made more and 
more uncomfortable and incongruous the posi 
tion of a resident, with the broad humanitarian 
sympathies and frank, free New England spirit 
of Prof. Noyes. Returning North, he engaged 
to fill a position as instructor in the American 



460 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Asylum at Hartford, Connecticut, where be 
faithfully labored for six years. In 18CC be 
came to Faribault, in response to bis appoint- 
ment as superintendent of tbe Minnesota 
School for tbe Deaf and the Blind. He had 
been comfortably established at Hartford, and 
the new field of labor opened to him on the 
borderland of civilization was a crude if not a 
perilous one, offering strenuous toil as its 
chief attraction. But in the veins of Prof. 
Noyes flowed an inheritance from pioneer an- 
cestors which well adapted him to cope with 
the conditions of the frontier. Under his 
efficient superintendency, tbe Minnesota insti- 
tution has been developed from a primitive es- 
tablisbment conducted in a wooden structure 
which, in its prime, had done duly as a store, 
to the present spacious aud magnificently 
equipped institute. Tbe building, like the en- 
terprise it houses, was a gradual growth, the 
north wing being founded during the first year 
of Prof. Noyes' management, the south wing 
five years later, and the main structure com- 
pleted in 1878. The conveniences and beauties 
of its interior are expressions of tbe solicitude 
and taste of Prof. Noyes. Its entire cost was 
some |175,000, aud it is conceded to be the 
finest State building in Minnesota. Another 
philanthropic institution — the Minnesota 
School for Imbeciles at Faribault — lived as a 
project in the fertile brain and devoted heart 
of Prof. Noyes years before it became a ma- 
terial fact. Prof. Noyes presided over the 
activities of the School for tbe Deaf for thirty 
years continuously, maintaining throughout a 
single-hearted view to the interests of his pu- 
pils. He was held ever in a progressive atti- 
tude of mind by his sympathetic desire to 
discover every possible improvement of meth- 
od for tbe development of the boys and girls 
in his charge. At length the constant drain 
upon his vital energies made such inroads 
upon bis general health as to render impera- 
tive his resignation, which was even then ac- 
cepted with reluctance by the board. Since 
1867 Prof. Noyes has been a trustee of Carleton 
College, at Northfield, Minnesota, having for 
twenty-five years served as president of the 
board. On July 21, 1862, Prof. Noyes was 



married to Eliza H. Wadswortb, of Hartford, a 
descendant of Col. Jeremiah Wadsworth, to 
whom the "Charter Oak" owes its fame, it hav- 
ing been he who concealed the historic docu- 
ment within its protecting bosom. Mrs. Noyes 
is a highly refined and cultivated woman, and 
a most admirable character. Always fully in 
sympathy with her husband's noble ideals and 
work, she possesses abilities which have quali- 
fied her to co-operate with him. She was for 
seven years an instructor in the American 
Asylum, a position to which she was peculiarly 
adapted by her skill in reading human nature 
and her profound sympathy for misfortune. 
Prof, and Mrs. Noyes are the parents of one 
daughter, named Alice Wadswwth. Like her 
illustrious father, Mrs. Alice Noyes-Smith has 
shown marked ability as a teacher and has 
been engaged in that profession for the past 
ten years in the Faribault Institution. She is 
a member of the Daughters of the Revolution, 
through both her parents' ancestry. The fam- 
ily attend service at the Congregational church 
of Faribault, in which the Professor is a dea- 
con. The Minnesota School for the Deaf stands 
as a perpetual testimonial to the noble ideals 
and achievements of its long-time Superinten- 
dent; but tbe true depths of a soul like his 
can be sounded, and tbe boundaries of its influ- 
ence fixed, only by the Infinite mind. 



THOMAS S. BUOKHAM. 

Thomas Scott Buekbam. LL. I)., for over 
twenty years Judge of the Fifth Judicial Dis- 
trict, was born in Chelsea, Orange county, Ver- 
mont, January 7, 1837. He is the son of Rev. 
James and Margaret (Barmby) Buekbam. His 
father, a native of Kelso, Scotland, was edu- 
cated to tbe ministry in tbe old Calvinistic 
school. He lived and preached in England for 
several years; came to America in 1836, and 
settled at Chelsea, Vermont. He later removed 
to Burlington, Vermont, where he continued 
to preach until he was seventy-five years of 
age. He was a fine classical scholar, a man 
of strong mind and a true Christian. He died 
in Burlington, in 1885, at the good old age of 
ninety-four years. His wife, Margaret Barm- 




The Century PiMisMy S, Cnjravtny Co Ctucapo- 



^Z7lX^r^>^AZ^ 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



461 



by, was a native of Hull, Yorkshire county, 
England. She died in Burlington, Vermont, at 
the age of seventy-six. They were the parents 
of ten children, of whom three sons and one 
daughter are yet living. One of the sons lias 
been for twenty-five years president of the Uni- 
versity of Vermont, at Burlington. Another 
son is principal of the State Normal School at 
Monmouth, Oregon, which position he lias 
occupied for the last five years. Previous to 
that time he was for many years president of 
the State Normal School at Buffalo, New York. 
The daughter is Mrs. Martha B. Benedict, wife 
of B. L. Benedict, Clerk of the United States 
District Court and Circuit Court for the East- 
ern District of New York, residing in Brook- 
lyn. The other son is the subject of this 
sketch. Thomas Scott Buckham received his 
preparatory education from his fattier and en- 
tered the University of Vermont, where he 
graduated from the classical course in L855. 
Since then the University has conferred on him 
the degree of LL. D. After graduation he 
taught Latin and Greek for one year in the 
seminary at Mexico, Oswego county, New 
York. In the summer of 1850 he came to Min- 
nesota and settled in Faribault, where he has 
ever since resided. He had read law while in 
college and while teaching. As soon as lie was 
settled in Faribault he was admitted to the bar 
of all the courts. He first commenced t lie prac- 
tice with George W. Batchelder, which part- 
nership continued until he was appointed to 
the bench in 1880, by Gov. John S. lMllsbury, 
as Judge of the Fifth Judicial District, which 
office he has continued to hold by reelection 
without opposition, until the present time. He 
is now serving his fourth term. Before he was 
appointed to the bench he served as county at- 
torney for two years and was county superin- 
tendent of schools for six years. He was also 
mayor of Faribault for one term, and was for 
twelve years on the board of regents of the 
State University. He served as State Senator 
in 1873-71, and was chairman of the judiciary 
committee both terms, and a member of the 
railroad committee. It was he who drew up 
the first bill that became a law. for the regu- 
lation of railroads in Minnesota. Judge Buck 



ham was married in Brooklyn, New York, No 
vember 25, L866, to Anna M. Mallary, a native 
of New York. Mr. and Mrs. Buckham attend 
the Congregational church, of which Mrs. 
Buckham is a member. They have no children. 



ALBERT W. STOCKTON. 

Albeit William Stockton, State Senator 
from the Twentieth District of Minnesota, a 
prominent business man and manufacturer of 
Faribault, was horn March 30, 1844, in 
Kosciusko county, Indiana, lie is the son of 
John C. and .Martha J. (Sippy) Stockton. His 
father was of English descent and his mother 
of French extraction. His parents removed to 
Richland county, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1854, 
where his father was engaged in farming and 
where he passed a quiet, uneventful life, in 
comfortable circumstances, honored and re- 
spected by his neighbors. He died at Richland 
Center, Wisconsin^ in July, 1886. Albeit W. 
was retired on his father's farm and received 
a common school education. August 22, 1862, 
he enlisted in Company B, Twenty-fifth Wis- 
consin Volunteer Infantry, going into camp at 
La Crosse, Wisconsin. In September, the regi- 
ment was ordered to Fort Snelling to partici- 
pate in the Indian War. The regiment was di- 
vided, and the company in which Mr. Stock- 
ton wtis serving, was stationed at Alexandria, 
Minnesota. In December it was ordered to re- 
port at Fort Snelling. and from there went to 
Camp Randall, Madison. Wisconsin. In Feb- 
ruary the following year his company went 
South to Columbus, Kentucky, and afterwards 
participated in all the marches and engage 
ments of the regiment. Mr. Stockton served 
with his company continuously, and was in all 
the battles in which the company was engaged 
until June II, L864, when he received a severe 
gunshot wound in the right thigh, while en- 
gaged in the battle of Peach Tree Orchard, in 
front of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia. Like 
thousands of others he experienced serious 
trouble in the healing of his wound and was 
confined in various hospitals, where he was an 
invalid for nearly a year. In June, 1865, he 
was discharged with his regiment at Madison, 



462 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Wisconsin. Returning home he was for sev- 
eral years engaged as a clerk in a general store. 
In August, 1872, he removed to Faribault, 
Minnesota, where he has since resided. He 
served as deputy county auditor of Rice county 
for twelve years, after which he was assistant 
cashier of the First National Bank for two 
years. In 188C he formed a partnership with 
John Hutchinson, purchased the Faribault 
Roller Mills and built the Faribault Furniture 
Factory, both located at Faribault, and lias 
since been largely engaged in the manufacture 
of flour and furniture. Mr. Stockton has al- 
ways taken an active interest in every enter- 
prise tending to build up and promote the best 
interests of his city and county. For ten years 
he has served as chairman of the board of 
county commissioners of Rice county. In 1890 
he was honored by the citizens of his district 
with an election to the State Senate, and was 
re-elected in 1891 and again in 1898. He is 
now serving his twelfth year in the State Sen 
ate, of which body he was elected president 
pro tern, in the session of 1899. He has been 
an active and influential member of the Legis- 
lature, having served on various important 
committees. In 1895 he was chairman of the 
railroad committee each term. Senator Stock 
ton is a staunch Republican in politics, is a 
Knight Templar and a member of several oth- 
er fraternal societies. He was married in Fari- 
bault, November 10, 1868, to Miss Belle Frink. 
daughter of Calvin Frink, late of Faribault. 
She died May 8, 1876. He was again married, 
September 10, 187S, to Miss Julia Andrews, 
of Faribault. They are the parents of one 
daughter, Glen B. Stockton, a student in the 
Slate University, and a son, Charles Murray 
Stockton, now attending the Shattuck School. 
Mr. and Mrs. Stockton attend the Congrega- 
tional church. 



RENSSELAER R. NELSON. 

The occupation of a Federal District Bench 
for a period of thirty-nine years is an honor 
which few men are privileged to point to as 
their record in the public service. Minnesota, 



since its admission to Statehood, has had 
as its representative on the United States Dis- 
trict Bench, Judge Rensselaer Russell Nelson, 
who exercised jurisdiction over his district un- 
til 1890, when he resigned. But Judge Nelson is 
not the only member of his family who has 
been prominent in the judiciary of the United 
States. His father, Samuel Nelson, was for 
many years and until his death, an Associate 
Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 
while Judge Nelson, of Brooklyn, who tried the 
famous Tilton-Beecher trial in 1875, was a 
second cousin, this branch of the family spell- 
ing their name Neilson. Rensselaer Russell 
Nelson, of St. Paul, was born in Cooperstown, 
( )l sego county, New York, May 12, 1820. He is 
of Irish descent on his father's side and of Eng- 
lish and Irish on his mother's side. His pater- 
nal great-grandfather, John Nelson, came from 
Ballibay, Ireland, in 1701, when his grand- 
father, John Rogers Nelson, was a child, and 
settled in Washington county, New York. Here 
Samuel Nelson, father of Rensselaer, was born, 
November 10, 1702, and died at Cooperstown, 
New York, in December 1873. He served in 
the War of 1812, and the land warrant given 
him for his services to his country at that time 
was located by his son, Rensselaer, on the 
lands in Minnesota. Young Nelson prepared 
for college in his native town. When but six- 
teen years old he entered Yale College, and 
was graduated from that institution in 1846. 
He had decided to follow in the footsteps of 
his father, and at once began reading law in the 
office of James R. Whiting, of New York City — 
who sat at one time on the Supreme Bench 
of the State of New York — and was admitted 
to the bar in his native town in 1849. He be- 
gan practice there, but within a short time 
removed to Minnesota, locating at St. Paul in 
1850. He continued his practice in that city 
for three or four years, then removed to West 
Superior, Wisconsin. While there, from 1851 
to 1850, he served as district attorney of 
Douglas county. In 1857 he returned to St. 
Paul and was appointed a Territorial Judge 
for Minnesota by President Buchanan. Minne- 
sota was admitted to the Union the following- 
year and Judge Nelson was appointed United 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



46 



States District Judge, the circuit over which 
he had jurisdiction taking in the whole of the 
State of Minnesota. By reason of the great 
extent of this circuit, lie having to preside 
alone at many terms of court, and also the fact 
that for many years the criminal laws of the 
United States were almost exclusively admin 
istered by the District Court, Judge Nelson's 
duties have been of a very laborious and com- 
plex character. But he was a hard worker 
and seldom took leave of his chambers. His 
long judicial experience on the District Bench, 
and his early and complete training in the doc- 
trines of the common law, have made him one 
of the leading expounders of the statutory 
laws in the United Stales. He made law 
and jurisprudence his life study, hence 
his high standing as a jurist. His decisions 
were always marked by I lie strictest impar- 
tiality, his judgment in his charges to juries 
exhibiting a rare judicial instinct to quickly 
wade through immaterial details to the essen- 
tial points, and were so finely balanced that his 
court was seldom brought into conflict with 
other courts. After a service on the bench 
of thirty-nine years, Judge Nelson, in 189G, 
resigned the office which he had so hon- 
orably filled, to pass the balance of his days 
freed from the onerous duties and worries of 
judicial life and to enjoy well-earned retire- 
ment. He carries with him the knowledge thai 
during his term of office he had the unqualified 
confidence and respect of both the bar and the 
people of the State. In politics Judge Nelson 
has been a life-long Democrat, but he has never 
been a strong partisan. The 3d of Novem- 
ber, 1858, he was married to Mrs. Emma F. 
Wright, nee Beebee, of New York. To them 
were born two children, Emma Beebee and 
Kate Russell. The latter died when eight 

years old. 

« • 

WILLIAM MORIN. 

The late William Morin, of Albert Lea, was 
born in the year 1827, at Maryborough, Ire- 
land. He grew up in his native country, where 
he acquired a fair common school education, 
which was supplemented by the special train- 



ing of a civil engineer. He was about twenty 
years of age when lie came (,, America, and his 
first five years in this country were spent in 
New York, lie secured the position of chief 
engineer on the Niagara Gorge Railway, and 
was engaged upon this and other lines of rail- 
road until 1856, the year in which he came 
west. After some lime spent in deciding upon 
a favorable location, Mr. Morin eventually set 
tied in Freeborn county, Minnesota, where he 
invested in large tracts of land and became 
one of the founders of the town of Albert Lea. 
lb' owned about one-half of the present town 
site, and at the time of his death, which oc- 
curred March 17, 1887, was the largest land 
owner in Freeborn county. He was an ener- 
getic and public-spirited man, and played a 
prominent part in developing the material in- 
terests of his city and county. He was a mem 
ber of the first city council of Albert Lea, and 
served continuously up to the time of his de- 
cease. He was the first county auditor and 
the first register of deeds of Freeborn county. 
He was also a member of the board of county 
commissioners, being one of those appointed 
by the Governor to locate the State School for 
Indigent Children. During the Civil War. Mr. 
Morin served as deputy United Slates assessor 
and deputy United States marshal. In 1860 
Mr. Morin was married to Margaret E. Wedge, 
sister of Dr. A. C. Wedge, of Ohio. Two chil- 
dren were born to them, viz.: William A. and 
Margaret Bell (now the wife of M. D. Purdy, 
of Minneapolis, assistant United States dis- 
trict attorney!. Mr. Morin was a Knight Tem- 
plar, and as a staunch Republican exerted an 
active influence in politics. He was never a 
"place-hunter," but his prominent characteris- 
tics of quick perception, common sense ami 
sound judgment and integrity, made him in 
demand for public office, and he accepted the 
proffered honors out of loyalty to the State 
and particularly to the city of Albert Lea. In 
his latter days, Mr. Morin bought a tine winter 
residence in Los Angeles, California, and it 
was here that he passed away. At the news 
of his death a great wave of regret swept 
through his home community, and the follow 
ing is quoted from the local press of that time: 



464 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



"Mr. Morin was a commissioner of the 
State Indigent School, at Owatonna, a mem- 
ber of the county board and the city council, 
and for over twenty-five, years he was a lead- 
ing, if not the most prominent factor in the 
prosperity and progress of Albert Lea and 
Freeborn county. He was a man of remark- 
able executive ability, and in the business 
world few with his opportunities have been 
more capable or successful. He was an up- 
right man, and in his habits and example a 
model man and citizen. Honest, honorable, 
charitable, kind and true, the ending of his 
career in the prime of his manhood was a pub- 
lic sorrow." 



William A. Morin, only son of the de- 
ceased, was born at Albert Lea on July 2'J. 
1864. He obtained his fundamental education 
in the public schools, and at fifteen entered 
I'illshury Academy at Owatonna, Minnesota, 
from which he graduated with the class of 
1884. Upon leaving school he became associ- 
ated with his father in his extensive real es- 
tate operations in Albert Lea. and soon became 
prominent in business and public affairs. For 
several years he served as county surveyor, 
and at a later period as county commissioner; 
and he succeeded his father on the board of 
city aldermen. Mr. Morin is a director in nu- 
merous institutions, as follows: The Albert 
Lea National Bank, Albert Lea Milling Com- 
pany. Duluth, Eed Wing & Southern 
and the Albert Lea & Southern Railroad 
companies (both in process of construc- 
tion), and the Consolidated Fire & Marine 
Insurance Company of Albert Lea. Mr. Morin 
is president of the A 11 pert Lea Hotel Company, 
which was organized by him. and is the pro- 
jector of the new Hotel Albert — a splendid, 
three-story brick structure erected at a cost of 
$50,000, and furnished at $10,000, being 
equipped with all the modern improved accom- 
modations. The junior Morin is, also, a Repub- 
lican, and like his father, takes his share as a 
responsible citizen in the local politics, with- 
out persona] ambition for publicity. He, too. is 
a Knight Templar and member of the Mystic 
Shrine. On the 10th of August, 1893, at 
Waverly, Iowa, Mr. Morin was married to 
Katherine Truesdell, a native of the above 



State. Mr. and Mrs. Morin are the parents of a 
son — William T. — now six years of age. 



HENRY H SIBLEY 



One of the men most prominently and most 
honorably identified with the early history of 
Minnesota was he whose name heads this brief 
and imperfect sketch. Only the most concise 
account possible of his life career may be given 
within the present limits, since his personal 
history is already well known. His fame is a 
part of that of the commonwealth he did so 
much to establish, and his name is a household 
word within its borders. Henry Hastings Sib 
ley was born at Detroit, Michigan. February 
20, 1811. He was a son of Judge Solomon 
Sibley, a native of Massachusetts, who became 
a distinguished citizen of the Northwest, and 
died in 1846. His mother was Sarah W. Sproat. 
a daughter of Col. Ebenezer Sproat, who was 
an officer in the Patriot army in the War of the 
Revolution, and her maternal grandfather was 
Commodore Abraham Whipple, of the Amer- 
ican navy. General Sibley was educated in a 
private school and at an academy in Detroit. 
At one time in his youth it was designed that 
he should be sent as a cadet to the LTnited 
States Military Academy at West Point and 
educated to the profession of a soldier, and he 
undertook a course of study preparatory there- 
for; but at last he resigned this prospect in 
favor of an elder brother, Ebenezer S. Sibley, 
who graduated at West Point and in time be- 
came a colonel in the regular army. His father 
then wished him to become a lawyer, and he 
began reading Blackstone at the age of fifteen. 
In about two years, however, he gave up his 
legal studies, and when but seventeen years of 
age went to the military post at Sault Ste. 
Marie, where he engaged as clerk in the sutler 
store of one John Hulbert. The next year he 
engaged as a clerk with the American Fur 
Company's establishment at Mackinaw. He 
was at Mackinaw in this capacity about five 
years. From 1832 to 1834 he was purchasing 
agent of the company at the Mackinaw station. 
In 1834 he formed a partnership with Hercules 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



465 



L. Dousman and Joseph Rolette, in the "Amer- 
ican Fur Company of New York," of which 
corporation Ramsay Crooks was president. By 
the terms of the agreement Dousman and Ro- 
lette were to continue in charge of the com- 
pany's siat ion a1 Prairie du Chien, and Sibley 
was given control of the country above Lake 
Pepin, to the headwaters of the streams flow- 
ing into the Missouri and north to the British 
line, with his headquarters at "St. Peters," as 
the locality at the mouth of the Minnesota was 
then called. He at once set out for his new- 
field and arrived at Fort Snelling November 
7, 1834. The trip from Prairie dn Chien to the 
fort, three hundred miles, was made on horse- 
back with Alexis Bailly and two French-Ca- 
nadian employees. lie lived at Mendota for 
twenty-eight years, or until 1862, and during 
this period was, by territorial changes, with- 
out a change of residence, successively a citi- 
zen of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa Terri- 
tories, and of the Territory and State of Minne- 
sota. In his isolated situation, for many years 
his companions and associates were the mem- 
bers of the garrison at Fort Snelling, the trad- 
ers and clerks of the fur company, and the 
Indians. From time to time, however, came 
travelers and prominent personages — as 
Schoolcraft, Nicollet, Feathers! onhaugh, 
Marryat, Catlin, Fremont, el id genus omm — 
and these were always his guests. He became 
the chief factor of the fur trade, thoroughly 
informed in the general character of the coun- 
try, and an authority upon its geography, its 
occupants, and its resources. With the In- 
dians he became thoroughly acquainted. He 
not only traded with them, but he learned their 
language, exchanged visits with them, ate with 
them, slept in their lodges, hunted with them, 
and was given by them an Indian name, "Wah- 
ze-o-man-nee" (Walker in the Pines), in addi- 
tion to his general designation, "Wah-pe-ton- 
houska" (The Tall Trader). He spoke and 
wrote the Sioux and French languages as flu- 
ently as the English. From the date of his 
advent into it, until Minnesota became a Ter- 
ritory, he was by all odds the most prominent 
and influential character in the country. From 
the first he became connected with its public 



affairs. He was appointed by Governor Cham- 
bers, of Iowa Territory, in 1838, the first jus- 
tice of the peace west of the Mississippi in the 
present .Minnesota, his jurisdiction extending 
over what now forms the whole of the State 
west of the river, a portion of Iowa, and the 
greater portion of the two Dakotas. He was 
the first foreman of a grand jury within the 
same limits. In 1842, Governor Chambers 
commissioned him a captain in the Iowa 
militia, and he raised and drilled a company of 
seventy-five mounted riflemen. In 1848 he was 
elected a delegate to Congress from the coun- 
try left over from the former Wisconsin Ter- 
ritory upon the admission of the State, and 
after some delay was admitted to a seat. Dur- 
ing his first session he introduced and secured 
the passage of the act organizing Minnesota 
Territory. In the fall of 184!) he was elected 
to represent the new Territory and re-elected 
in 1851. His services in Congress were inval- 
uable to his constituents and their Territory. 
In 1857 he was elected president of the Demo 
eratic branch of the Constitutional Conven- 
tion, and in 1858 was elected the first Governor 
of the State. He served a term in the Legis- 
lature in 1871, was one of the original board 
of regents of the State University, was presi- 
dent of the hoard for several years, and still a 
member at his death. For two years he was 
president of the State Normal School board. 
His military services during the Indian wars. 
from 1862 to 1865, gained for him a reputation 
and renown which will never perish, though 
perhaps never be fully appreciated. The next 
day after the sudden and disastrous uprising 
of the Sioux of .Minnesota, August 18, 1862, he 
was commissioned colonel, commanding the 
expeditionary force ordered against them. 
That evening he planned his campaign, and 
afterwards carried it out with hardly an un- 
important deviation from the original designs. 
How well he executed his mission history tells, 
and nearly everbody who will read these pages 
knows. His little force, hastily organized and 
insufficiently equipped, was not only an army 
of offensive invasion, but an army of libera- 
tion and salvation. Finally, at Wood lake, 
September 23. it assaulted the savages at their 



466 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



most formidable stand, defeated them com- 
pletely and drove them, howling in terror 
and dismay, from the country. Then it made 
prisoners of nearly two thousand of the fugi- 
tive redskins, and won the crowning feature of 
its work in the rescue from a bondage nearly 
as terrible as death of two hundred captives, 
nearly all women and children. Six days after 
the battle of Wood lake the President com- 
missioned Sibley a brigadier general. He 
continued in service until April, 1866, retiring 
with the rank of brevet major general. During 
this period he led the so-called "Sibley Expedi- 
tion" of 1863 against the Sioux of Dakota, 
defeated them in three battles and drove them 
across the upper Missouri. In 1864-5 he was 
in command of the military district of Minne- 
sota, from which he was relieved in August, 
1865, and detailed on a commission with Gen- 
eral Curtis and others to conclude treaties 
with the hostile Indians of the Missouri. 
Meantime, in 1862, he removed from Mendota 
to St. Paul, where he ever after resided. His 
connection with the business interests of the 
city and State became very intimate and 
prominent. At various periods he was presi- 
dent of the Chamber of Commerce, director in 
the First National Bank, and in the St. Paul & 
Siimx City Railroad, president of the St. Paul 
Gas Company, of the board of regents of the 
State University, of the State Historical So- 
ciety, of the Oakland Cemetery Association, 
etc. In 1888-9 he was commander of the Min- 
nesota Commandery of the Loyal Legion. The 
county of Sibley, the city of Hastings, Sibley 
street, and the Sibley school were named for 
him, circumstances which indicate his promi- 
nent connection with public affairs and his 
high regard in the public estimation, lie was, 
by nature, kind-hearted, generous and liberal, 
even to prodigality, and he probably gave 
as much to public and private charity 
as any other citizen of the State. 
Naturally he was intellectual, and was 
a good writer and speaker. His literary 
tasies were quite marked. After his death 
his papers were turned over to the Historical 
Society, examined, selected, and tiled. It was 
found that he had preserved, with scrupulous 
care, probably every letter and every other pa- 



per that he had received from the age of six- 
teen to within a few months of his death. 
Over three thousand of his letters and papers 
of historic character are now on tile in the 
vaults of the society. After a long life of use- 
fulness, prominence, honor and distinct inn. 
General Sibley died, at his residence on Wood 
ward avenue, St. Paul, February 1S, 1891, with- 
in two days of his eightieth birthday. His death 
was an event in the history of the city, and all 
proper public and private honors were paid to 
his memory. He left many sincere friends 
who admired him almost to reverence for his 
noble qualities, his many generous actions, and 
his pure and exalted character. General Sib- 
ley married, May 2, 1S-43, Miss Sarah J. Steele, 
daughter of (Jen. James Steele, of Pennsyl- 
vania. Mrs. Sibley was a lady of very superior 
traits of character and general worth, a most 
befitting companion for her gallant and dis- 
tinguished husband, and beloved by all who 
knew her. She died, after twenty-six years of 
unusually felicitous domestic life, in May, 1869, 
leaving four children — Augusta, now Mrs. Au- 
gusta A. Pope, relict of Captain Douglas Pope, 
IT. S. A.; Sarah, now Mrs. E. A. Young, of St. 
Paul; Charles Frederic, of Washington, D. 
G, and Alfred Brush Sibley, of St. Paul. 



JOHN B. WHEELER. 



John Brown Wheeler, of Faribault, is a na- 
tive of Massachusetts, born at Northbridge, 
Worcester county, on the 8th of May, 1822. 
His parents, Benjamin and Rhoda (Aldrich) 
Wheeler, were both Quakers of old New Eng- 
land stock, who followed an agricultural life, 
and the subject of this sketch was reared amid 
rural scenes. He was educated at the Friends' 
school in Providence, Rhode Island, where, as 
well as in his home, he was imbued with the 
virtues of simplicity, honesty and thrift. He 
taught school during a few winter terms, and. 
responding to an early demand for his service 
in the public affairs of his native town, offici- 
ated as assessor and on the school board for 
several years. In 1850, Mr. Wheeler visited 
Illinois, in which State he remained for about 
a year, occupied with teaching, in a school 





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BIOGEAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



467 



near Chicago during the winter season, and 
1 lie following summer at a point further west, 
after which lie returned to liis homo in Massa- 
chusetts. Three yours later, his health be- 
ing in an unsettled state, ho was induced to 
try the climate of Minnesota, and again com- 
ing west, he located, in May, 1856, at Fari- 
bault, which lias ever since been his place of 
residence und business. He opened a drug 
store on the corner of .Main and Second streets, 
and proceeded to erect the store building 
where his business was located for forty-two 
years. His stock at first consisted of a fine 
assortment of drugs and fancy goods, to which 
he afterwards added a large supply of grocer- 
ies, crockery, etc. He conducted both a whole- 
sale and a retail trade; and being a pioneer 
merchant of the town, with a widely various 
stock of goods, he commanded an extensive 
patronage and realized good success. In 1899 
Mr. Wheeler sold out his mercantile business, 
and is now living in retirement from active 
affairs. Side by side with his individual inter- 
ests. Mr. Wheeler has performed the part of a 
wide-awake citizen in public activities, hav- 
ing filled many local offices, besides serving 
for a number of years en the board of county 
commissioners. He was one of the builders of 
(he Brunswick Hotel, and for a term of years 
was a director of the Citizens' National Bank, 
of Faribault. Mr. Wheeler is a man of ex- 
emplary habits and perfect integrity of char- 
acter. Throughout his lengthy business career 
and in his capacity of public official he has 
proven thoroughly reliable, and his standing 
has always been high in the estimation of the 
people of his home city and the larger com- 
munity of the county. In tin- year 1853 Mr. 
Wheeler was united in marriage to Miss Clara 
L. Sloconib, daughter of Horatio Slocomb, of 
Sutton, Worcester county, Massachusetts. 
Three children were born of their union, one 
of whom — John Franklin — died in 1864, at the 
age of four years. The two now living are: 
William Henry, a resident and grain operator 
of Minneapolis, and Mary S., now the wife of 
Edmond K. Clements. 1). I>. S.. of Faribault. 
A new generation has at present four prom- 
ising representatives — a sun and daughter of 



William Henry Wheeler and two daughters of 
Mrs. Clements— who add fresh interest to the 
declining years of our subject. In 1874 Mr. 
Wheeler built a line house in Faribault, which 
is still the family residence; and within its 
comfortable shelter he enjoys the society of 
relatives and friends and the serene conscious- 
ness of having lived an honorable and useful 
life. 



RODNEY A. MOTT. 



Hon. Rodney Alonzo Mott, ex-mayor of Fari- 
bault, was born in Warsaw, New York, De- 
cember (i. 1825, the son of Daniel Mott, who 
died when his son Rodney was only about two 
years old. His mother, whose maiden name 
was Hannah Frank, was of a family who were 
prominent in the early history of New York, 
her father being Col. Nathaniel Frank, who 
served with distinction in the War of 1812. 
In April, 1835, our subject removed with his 
mother to Chicago, and took a preparatory 
course in Baker Academy, at Lockport, Illi- 
nois. In 1846 he entered Knox College, at 
Galesburg, where he remained until 1848. He 
commenced the study of law in Chicago, in the 
office of Judge James H. Collins. He had sup- 
ported himself through his literary and legal 
studies by teaching school and by work in the 
harvest field. In 1850 he went overland to 
California, and returned, by the water route, 
in the summer of lsr>L\ In October of the same 
year he married Miss Mary Ripley, daughter 
of Rev. David Bradford Ripley, of Pomfret, 
Connecticut. Soon after this he established 
what was known as the "Crete Normal Acad 
cmy," a training school for teachers, which he 
conducted for several years. In the spring of 
1856 he came to Minnesota and taught the first 
public school at Faribault. In December, fol- 
lowing, he took charge of the first newspaper 
published in Faribault. called the "Rice County 
Herald," changing its name to the "Faribault 
Herald" (now the Faribault Republican). In 
1858 he sold the paper to Mr. (). Brown, was 
admitted to the bar, and immediately began 
practicing law. He was elected county at- 
tornev the same year and served two terms. 



468 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



He was also appointed county superintendent 
of schools, and served in that capacity for 
several years. In L880, he was elected to the 
State Legislature. He served as chairman of 
i lie committee on education; helped to pre- 
pare, drew up and presented the report for 
the amendment of the high school act, whieh 
became a law in 1881. Mr. Mott was also on 
other important committees during the time 
he served in the Legislature, and he took an 
active and influential part in the deliberations 
of the house. Mr. Molt has been connected 
with the State institutions at Faribault, as 
director and secretary of the board of man- 
agers since they were founded. In 1S88 he 
was elected Judge of 1'robate for Rice county, 
and held that office until 1898. He has also 
been a member of the library board since its 
first organization. He was elected mayor of 
Faribault in April. 1899. To Mr. and Mrs. 
Mott were born live children, all daughters, of 
whom two are now living. Millie, who became 
the wife of Prof. \Y. M. West, of the Minne- 
sota State University, died December 6, 1807. 
Mary E. and Martha < \ are also deceased. 
Those living are Alice J. and Louise. Mr. 
Mott and his family are members of the Con- 
gregational church, take an active part in Sun- 
day-school work and take more than an ordi- 
nary interest in literary pursuits. 



CHARLES A. POOLE. 



The Rev. Charles Augustus Poole, S. T. D., 
was born on the 12th of December, 1849, at 
Cape Vincent, Jefferson county, New York. 
His father, Calvin Keith Poole, counted among 
his American ancestors Lieut. Samuel Poole, 
who played a patriot's pari in the struggle for 
independence, and traced his lineage farther 
back to Edward Poole, of Weymouth, England, 
who, together with other residents of the same 
place, crossed the Atlantic to Massachusetts 
Bay in the year 1635 and founded the town of 
Weymouth, Massachusetts. The maiden name 
of Calvin Poole's wif. — mother of tin- subject 
of this sketch—was .lane Susan Williams, and 
she was descended from Capt. Judah Williams, 



of Massachusetts, commander of a company 
in the Revolutionary War. Dr. Poole obtained 
a preliminary education in the public schools 
of his native county. Then, at the age of ten 
years, he became a pupil in a private school. 
Five years later he took up his residence at 
Oswego, New York, with a view to securing 
the greater advantages there afforded for ad- 
vanced study. He graduated from the high 
school at Oswego in 1868, and in the following 
autumn entered Ilobart College. During his 
college days he distinguished himself by his 
proficiency in the languages and for his ora- 
torical powers, winning prizes for the excel- 
lence of his essays in Greek, Latin and Eng- 
lish, and being selected as the salutatorian of 
his class at commencement. After the comple- 
tion of his collegiate course, he accepted a 
position to teach in Oxford Academy, at Ox- 
ford, New York, where he remained for a year, 
at the head of the departments of natural 
science and ancient languages. He resigned 
his post in this institution to become a student 
of theology in the Seabury Divinity School, at 
Faribault, Minnesota, where he graduated in 
the year 1876. He was ordained deacon and 
priest by Bishop Huntington, and promptly 
en i ered upon the duties of his high vocation. 
During seven years he was engaged fn minis 
terial labor in New York State, presiding over 
three successive parishes in the respective 
towns of Camden. Turin and New Berlin. In 
November, 1883, he returned to Minnesota in 
response to a call to the rectorate of St. Paul's 
church at Duluth. While in charge of the 
Duluth parish, in addition to his regular duties 
as rector, he was very active in introducing 
needed improvements and instigating noble 
enterprises. A hue rectory was built and the 
church building enlarged, and the first pipe 
organ in the city was constructed under his 
rectorship. He was also the projector and 
founder of a mission near Rice's Point, in the 
western pari of the city, from which St. Luke's 
church has since been evolved. In 1888 Dr. 
Poole was elected to the chair of Systematic 
Theology in Seabury Divinity School, his pro- 
fessorship being an associate one to that of 
the Rev. Dr. J. S. Kedney. On October L':;, 




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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



469 



1878, Dr. Poole was united in marriage to 
Maria Edna Kedney. daughter of Rev. J. S. 
and Elizabeth (Cooke) Kedney, her mother be- 
ing issued from the Cooke family of Catskill, 
New Yoik. Dr. Kedney. who himself belongs 
to a New York family, has been a professor in 
Seabury Hall for the past twenty nine years. 
Four children, all of them daughters, have 
been born to Dr. and Mrs. Poole. The degrees 
of A. It. in course, A. M. and S. T. I)., were all 
conferred upon our subject by Hobart College, 
his alma mater. Dr. Poole is still connected 
with Seabury Divinity School, where he has 
passed twelve years of happy usefulness. 



HENRY R. WHIPPLE. 

The Righl Rev. Henry Benjamin Whipple, 
D. D., LL. D., Protestant Episcopal Bishop of 

the diocese of Minnesota, was born in Adams, 
Jefferson county. New York. February 15, 
Isl'2. Of his family history and early life, we 
cannot do better than quote the following from 
his book, "Lights and Shadows of a Long 
Episcopate" (1899), published by the Mac- 
Millan Company, New York and London: "I 
have paid very little attention to the subject 
of genealogy. I know that in the history of 
my family it has numbered a goodly line of 
God-fearing men and women, who have been 
loyal and useful in their devotion to church 
and State. Sixteen of my kinsfolk were officers 
in the Colonial and Revolutionary wars. 
Brigadier-General Whipple was one of the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence. 
The mother of Stephen Hopkins, another 
signer of the Declaration, was a Whipple. My 
grandfather, Benjamin Whipple, was in the 
navy of the American Revolution, which was 
then in its infancy, but honored by the heroic 
bravery of Paul Jones and his associates. He 
was taken prisoner and confined in the prison 
ship 'Jersey,' and came out of it a paralytic. 
My father, John H. Whipple, was born in 
Albany, New York. He married Elizabeth, 
daughter of the lion. Henry Wager, one of 
the electors of Thomas Jefferson. My child- 
hood was as happy as a tender mother and a 



blessed home could make il. I owe much to 
my holy mother, from whom 1 learned the 
blessedness of (iod's word, and whose unfal- 
tering voice, iii speaking of divine truth, saved 
me from scepticism. I received my education 
in private schools of New York. At ten years 
of age I was sent to the boarding school of 
the late Professor Avery, in Clinton, and next, 
to the school under the charge of the Rev. Dr. 
Boyd and the Rev. John Covert. When a 
student at Oberlin I resided with my uncle, 
the Rev. George Whipple, Professor of Mathe- 
matics. While pursuing my studies my health 
failed, and by the advice of my physician, T 
accepted an offer from my father and for a 
time was connected with him in business. 
From earliest youth I had been deeply inter- 
ested in political affairs. My father belonged 
to tin' old Whig parly, but I became a Demo 
crat of the conservative school. Through the 
influence of Governor Dix, I was appointed by 
Governor Marcy, division inspector with the 
rank of colonel on the staff of Major -General 
Corse, having been previously appointed .Major 
by Gov. William L. Bouck. ft a horded many 
pleasant hours of recreation with the fuss and 
feathers of military equipage. My last serv- 
ice in the political Held was as secretary of 
a State convention. Thurlow Weed and Edwin 
Croswell said, when they heard that Mr. Whip- 
ple had become a candidate for Holy Orders. 
that they 'hoped a good politician had not been 
spoiled to make a poor preacher.' " During 
an attack of illness, when confined to his room, 
.Mr. Whipple decided to prepare himself for 
Holy Orders, receiving from his father and 
Bishop De Lancey their hearty sympathy. He 
received his theological training under the 
eminent scholar, the Rev. Dr. W. D. Wilson, 
Professor in Cornell University. In August, 
ist!». he was ordered deacon by Bishop De 
Lancey, in Trinity church, Geneva, New York. 
He was ordained priest by Bishop De Lancey 
in Christ church, Sackett's Harbor, the fol- 
lowing February, lie was immediately called 
to Zion church. Koine. New York, and during 
his rectorship there he became an advocate of 
the free church system — a fad which after- 
wards influenced his election as Bishop of 



4~o 



BTOGRArriY OF MINNESOTA. 



Minnesota. He married the eldest daughter of 
the Hon. Benjamin Wright, of Jefferson 
county, New York. Although Mr. Whipple, 
after building up a fine parish and erecting a 
stone church in Rome, received five or six calls 
to flourishing city churches, he did not feel that 
he had received a call in ils true sense until 
he was asked lo go to Chicago, where there 
was no free church, but hundreds of clerks and 
railway men waiting for a shepherd, (living 
up a devoted parish, a pleasant rectory and a 
good salary, he went to Chicago, with Bishop 
De Lancey's assurance that he ••would starve 
if he went." and plunged at once into his work 
by visiting the railroad shops and saloons and 
inviting the men to attend his church. His 
congregation rapidly grew, and he showed the 
tact which he possessed in reaching the hearts 
of the people. The remarkable success which' 
attended his work attracted attention. Men 
like Generals Burnside and Banks became 
members of his congregation and his devoted 
friends. In the year 1859 he was elected to the 
episcopate with a unanimous vote by the con 
vention of the Diocese of Minnesota, which 
met at St. Paul. He was consecrated first 
Bishop of Minnesota, October 13, of the 
same year, at the session of the General Con- 
vention at Richmond, Virginia. Soon after 
the close of the convention he visited Minne- 
sota in the discharge of the duties of his office. 
The following spring he made Faribault his 
home, believing it to be the best center for 
the building up of his schools. At this time 
the Rev. -I. L. Brock had a small parish school 
in Faribault. Tin- Bishop laid the cornerstone 
of the Cathedral, at Faribault, on the 16th of 
.Inly, 1862. This was the first Protestant 
Cathedral erected in the United Stales. The 
Bishop laid the cornerstone of Seabury Divin- 
ity School the following day, the 17th of July. 
The Bishop Seabury Mission was incorporated 
May, 1860, with a board of trustees, of which 
the Bishop of the diocese is ex-ofticio president. 
There were at that time twenty thousand In- 
dians in Minnesota, and with the determina- 
tion that the heathen close at hand should not 
be neglected, the Bishop became the spiritual 
father of the Red Men. In addition to the 



work among the Chippewas, a new mission 
was established in the fall of the same year 
among the lower Sioux on the Minnesota 
river. On the breaking out of the Civil War, 
in 1861, the Bishop interested himself in the 
welfare of the soldiers, and was elected chap- 
lain of the First Regimenl of Minnesota Vol- 
unteers — an honor which he necessarily 
declined. He often visited them in camp, and 
actively promoted the labors of the sanitary 
commission in behalf of the sick and wounded. 
Subsequently he aided in many ways in the 
relief of the widows and orphans of those who 
had fallen in the war. When he came to 
Minnesota there was not a mile of railroad in 
the State. His journeys were all made by 
stage, canoe or with his own horses, and dur- 
ing the first year, besides his visits to the 
Indian country, he preached from one to three 
times in every hamlet of the State. In 1862 
occurred the Indian outbreak of which the 
Bishop had already given warning. He was 
among the foremost to care for the wounded 
and mutilated, many of whom had been known 
to him and whose hospitality he had enjoyed 
in his missionary journeys on the frontier. At 
great personal hazard he raised his voice 
against the cry for indiscriminate extermina- 
tion, and visited Washington in behalf of the 
innocent members of this deeply injured and 
long suffering race. He began his pleas with 
the government for Indian rights in 1859, and 
has not ceased even to the present time. His 
efforts were not without success, and, in ISO.'!, 
he was appointed a commissioner with Bishop 
Grace of St. Paul and Dr. Williamson of the 
Presbyterian mission to visit the several In- 
dian tribes with a view to improving their 
condition. In the fall of 1864 ill-health from 
over-work compelled Bishop Whipple to seek 
rest. He accordingly visited England, where 
he made warm friends, among whom were 
Bishop Wilberforce, Dr. Longley, Archbishop 
of Canterbury, and Dr. Tait. Bishop of Lon- 
don. From the two latter, who had been head- 
masters at Harrow and Rugby, the Bishop 
received valuable counsel concerning the or- 
ganization of his schools. He extended his 
journey to the continent and the Holy Land. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



471 



To supply a long-felt need in his educational 
scheme, Bishop Whipple decided to open a 
school for girls. Mrs. Whipple entered into 
this plan, and, in 1860, the school was opened 
in the Bishop's own house, which was re- 
modeled — the Bishop undertaking the entire 
expense. The number of pupils was at first 
limited to thirty. For several years Mrs. 
Whipple discharged the office of house mother, 
until St. Mary's Hall had secured by its ex- 
cellent management the entire confidence of 
the public. In the summer of 1807 the Cathe- 
dra] of Our Merciful Savior was completed and, 
by the Bishop's invitation, was consecrated 
by Bishop Kemper. Phelps Library was also 
built in this year, afterwards remodeled and 
used as a cottage for the cadets, and later in 
the year Shattuck Hall was completed. Shat- 
tuck School was named in honor of George < '. 
Shattuck, M. D., of Boston, a dear friend and 
a liberal contributor to the Bishop's work. 
Dr. Shattuck was the founder of St. Paul's 
School, Concord, New Hampshire. When Con- 
gress authorized the detail of army officers to 
schools of a certain grade, Bishop Whipple 
was first to apply for a detail for Shattuck, 
believing it a better means of discipline than 
flogging, and it was through his influence at 
Washington that Shattuck has been so fav- 
ored in its military instructors. Mrs. Augusta 
M. Shumway, afterwards Mrs. Huntington, 
another of the Bishop's friends who became 
interested in his work, gave him the money 
with which to erect the Shumway Memorial 
chapel for the use of Shattuck School, seating 
two hundred and fifty persons. This chapel 
was ready for consecration in 1873. At her 
death it was found that Mrs. Huntington had 
left a legacy to the school of about f300,000, 
with a part of which Shumway nail was 
erected for general school purposes, and also 
Johnson Hall, which contains a fire-proof 
library for the Seabury Divinity School. In 
February, 1871, the foreign committee of the 
Board of Missions requested Bishop Whipple 
to visit their mission at. Hayti. He was de- 
tained in Havana, where, in spite of the cold- 
ness existing between Spain and the United 
States, he held the first public Protestant 



service ever held in Cuba, holding confirma- 
tions and celebrating Holy Communion. The 
same year lie was offered by the Archbishop 
of Canterbury the bishopric of the Sandwich 
Islands, as the King had asked for a bishop 
of the Anglican church. This offer was de- 
clined in the interest of his schools and be- 
cause he believed that it might imperil the 
work in the white and Indian fields. No brief 
sketch can describe the character of Bishop 
Whipple. Dr. Lyman Abbott spoke truly 
when he said, "Bishop Whipple is a genuine 
statesman in his grasp of fundamental prin- 
ciples and his readiness of application to 
special circumstances. Substantially all the 
conclusions which modern statesmanship has 
reached respecting the true solution of the 
Indian problem were distinctly formulated by 
Bishop Whipple forty years ago." Whether 
in his churchmanship, in his dealing with the 
Indian question, or in the handling of educa- 
tional work — and in a marked degree his 
action in regard to the Swedish church ques- 
tion in his diocese — his statesmanlike methods 
have ever been exhibited, and it is to these 
high qualities that the diocese of Minnesota 
owes its proud position. Bishop Whipple's 
noble type of face, which in youth was of 
singular beauty, is clear-cut and ecclesiastical, 
and with his commanding figure, over six feet 
and two inches in height, he is regarded as the 
most picturesque figure in the Anglican 
church. He is a born orator, his action grace- 
ful and impressive, his voice melodious and 
impassioned, and with a keen sense of humor 
his personality is fascinating. He has the 
faculty of ready extemporaneous discourse, 
while his composition has oftentimes a rhyth- 
mic tiow. His power of remembering names 
even after an interval of many years is rare. 
With a ready tact he is eminently fitted to 
preside over a deliberative body, and his power 
in this regard has been exercised on many 
delicate occasions. His presentation of a ques- 
tion to a deliberative body is clear and judi- 
cious, and he has served on many important 
committees. But the greatest of all these gifts 
is the charity which has so signally marked 
his life and work. In the administration of 



472 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



his diocese be lias broughl together men of 
diverse schools of theological thought, who 
have been of one mind in the household of 
good winks. Moreover, he lias been active in 
the effort i<> promote church unity. His in- 
terest in the McCall mission in Paris was open 
and hearty. The Society of Friends has given 
him its aid and confidence; while the moder- 
ator of the General Assembly of the Presby- 
terian church in Scotland sent him assurances 
of sympathy in the darkest period of his 
Indian missions, and he was invited, in 1890 
(by the moderator of the Presbyterian church 
in Scotland), to address their General Assem- 
bly. His life has been too busy for much 
literary work so-called. This has been con- 
fined to sermons and addresses, to newspaper 
articles upon the Indian policy, and to his 
valuable and charming "Lights and Shadows 
of a Long Episcopate.'' Even his vacations 
have few leisure moments, and much of his 
useful work has been accomplished in these 
seasons of so-called leisure. In 188G the elec- 
tion of an assistant bishop brought him help 
in the care of his large diocese, with its con- 
stantly increasing population, but his activity 
in the interest of his schools and diocesan work 
is unabated. Bishop Whipple has had a wide 
acquaintance and friendship with famous men 
of the last half century, both in England and 
America. He has been brought in contact 
with all sorts and conditions of men, but in 
the fifty years of his priestly and episcopal 
career he has borne himself with equal ease 
and dignity in the wigwam, the lumber camps 
of the frontier, and in the courts of Europe — 
always an American gentleman. Love of God 
and love of man has been the burden' of his cry. 
In 1888 he attended the Pan- Anglican council 
in London, and preached the opening sermon 
in Lambeth Palace. He is a leading member of 
the House of Bishops of the Episcopal church 
in the United States. He is a recognized au- 
thority on all questions relating to the Indian 
problem. He has been a member of several 
important Indian commissions sent by the 
Government to make treaties, and, in 1868, 
without his knowledge, Congress appropriated 
forty-five thousand dollars for the Sisseton and 



Wahpeton Indians on the condition that the 
money should be expended by him. His fear- 
less report on the condition and treatment 
of [he Indians, delivered at the request of Mv. 
Cooper, in Cooper's Institute, and in Calvary 
church, New York, led to the organization of 
the Indian Peace Commission. In 187.'! Bishop 
Whipple was elected a trustee of the Peabody 
Fund for Education in the South, whose first 
president, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, was suc- 
ceeded by Hon. William M. Evarts. Bishop 
Whipple and Chief Justice Fuller are the two 
vice-presidents of I his brilliant body of men. 
Bishop Whipple was the acting presiding 
bishop of the American chinch in England at 
the Lambeth Conferences of 1888 and 1897. 
He has preached on several occasions the 
special sermons before the Universities of 
Cambridge, Oxford, and Durham, having re- 
ceived the honorary degrees of LL. D. and U. 
D. from these universities. Iu 1899 he was 
asked by the Foreign and Domestic Mission- 
ary Society of England, and also by the Board 
of Missions, to attend the centenary of the 
former society and deliver addresses, as the 
representative of the Episcopal church in 
America. Bishop Whipple is Chaplain-General 
of the Societies of the Sons of the Revolution 
and the Colonial Wars of the United States. 
He was fittingly selected at the first patriotic 
celebration of Washington's birthday in 
Puerto Rico, February 22, 1900, to deliver the 
address lief ore an audience of several thou- 
sand, on "Our Country."' Bishop Whipple's 
second marriage was most blessed. In a 
beautiful but brief tribute to his wife, in his 
recently published work, he says: It was 
the loving Providence of Cod which made one 
who is now my helper in all His work my 
parishioner. Her love and sympathy for the 
sorrowful and heavy-laden, and her deep in- 
terest in the brown and black races who have 
so long held a place in my heart, drew us to- 
gether. And in this gift my Heavenly Father 
has overpaid me for the burdens which I have 
carried for His children." At the request of 
the Board of Missions, Bishop Whipple visited 
Puerto Rico, February, 1900, to examine the 
held for church work. The first Protestant 




JEAN B. FARIBAULT 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



473 



American bishop to set foot on this new pos- 
session of the United Slates, he was received 
everywhere in his journey through the island 
with great warmth and enthusiasm. The name 
of the first great Bishop of Minnesota is one 
that will ever stand for all that is highest and 
best. His grand life and work are inwrought 
in the history of the noble State of Minnesota. 



JEAN B. FARIBAULT. 

Jean Baptiste Faribault was born October 
19, 1775, at Berthier, Canada. His grand- 
father was an officer in the Royal Iluisiers. 
His father was Bathelemi Faribault, who was 
born in Paris, and came to Canada as secre- 
tary of the French army in 1757. Jean Bap- 
tiste Faribault received an excellent education 
and early in life began business in the employ 
of a merchant by the name of Thurseau, at 
Quebec. After two years he entered the 
service of Messrs. McNides & Company, im- 
porters. Of an adventurous disposition, he 
chafed under such close confinement, and was 
about to go to sea, wishing in that way to see 
more of life and of the world. His family so 
strongly opposed this resolution that he finally 
gave it up. About this time the Duke of Kent, 
the father of Queen Victoria, was stationed 
in Canada, with his regiment of Fusiliers, of 
which he was in command. Young Mr. Fari- 
bault, being much impressed with the brilliant 
military display of the Duke's command, 
though never having taken lessons in art, drew 
a cartoon which was much commented upon 
for its excellent representation, and praised 
for the exhibition of his talent. The officers 
of the regiment communicated this to the 
Prince, and wishing to judge for himself, he 
sent for young Faribault. This led to an ac- 
quaintance and friendship, and in time tin- 
Prince offered him a commission as an officer 
in his regiment. His family again interposed 
against his desire to enter the life of an army 
officer, a fact to which he often referred in his 
later days as regretting the opportunity he lost 
through his devotion to his parents. The 
Prince, however, permitted young Faribault 



to select one of his young friends to whom he 
would like the commission to be given. The 
Northwest Company having announced that 
they needed three or four active young men to 
trade with the Indians, Faribault offered his 
services. His parents now pleaded with him 
in vain not to leave the parental roof. Fas- 
cinated with the prospects of a life of adven- 
ture in the wilds of the far West, he was this 
time insensible to their remonstrances. Fari- 
bault left Montreal in the month of June, 1790, 
in company with three others and two agents 
of the Northwest Company, their destination 
being Mackinac. They were two weeks on 
their journey, and encountered many hard 
ships and difficulties. They met with no 
travelers on their route, and were obliged to 
make many portages on numerous rapids — 
that is to say, they carried on their shoulders 
their canoes, baggage and provisions. On their 
arrival at Mackinac, Faribault was commis- 
sioned to open a post to trade at Kankakee, 
on the river of that name not far from the 
present site of Chicago. Faribault, accom- 
panied by a Pottowatomi Indian guide, set 
out for Port Vincent, on the Wabash river, 
where lived Governor Harrison, acting su- 
perintendent of Indian affairs in or- 
der to obtain license to trade. Governor 
Harrison received him cordially, en- 
tertained him with kind hospitality, and 
acceded favorably to his request. Returning 
to his post, Faribault had calculated on meet- 
ing at the mouth of the St. Joseph river, four 
Canadian voyageurs, who were to pass the 
winter at Kankakee; however, he found only 
three, the other having unhappily perished 
during the voyage. After a careful survey, 
Faribault decided to build his post at the 
mouth of the Kankakee. His merchandise 
being delayed on the way, he and his com- 
panions occupied their time in erecting their 
winter quarters, and soon commenced an active 
trade with the Pottawatomies. Faribault re- 
mained at this post during four years in almost 
complete solitude. Though he felt a strong 
attachment and kindly feeling towards the 
Indians, he was often at the risk of his life 
at their hands, and on one occasion was nearly 



474 



BTOGEAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



assassinated by a half-breed. This region 
abounded with wild animals, such as otter, 
bearer, wolves, bear and other fur-bearing 
animals, and inhabited by the Sioux, Sacs and 
Foxes, lowas, and other tribes. His term of 
contract expiring, he decided to continue with 
the Northwest Company, and went to open a 
new post on the St. Peter's river (now Minne- 
sota river), which he named the "Little 
Rapids," where he was rewarded with a lucra- 
tive business with the Sionx. A few years 
after opening up the post and establishing suc- 
cessful trade with the Indians, he was married 
to .Mrs. Pelagie Haines. In 1805 Faribaull met 
and made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Pike, 
who visited his post. After ten years with Hie 
Northwest Company, Faribault decided to go 
into the same business on his own account, and 
accordingly located at Prairie du Chien. At 
this post he was attacked and seriously 
wounded by a Winnebago, to whom he had 
refused to give liquor. When the War of 
1812 was declared, the English authorities. 
knowing the influence some of the Canadians 
held over the Indians, offered them commis- 
sions as officers to induce the Indians to take 
sides with them. Many accepted, but among 
those who refused these otters were Faribault 
and Louis Provencal, one of his associates, 
who declared themselves in sympathy with the 
United States. The British Colonel, McCall, 
hearing of the refusal of Faribault to serve 
under the English flag, had him put under 
arrest and brought on board the gunboat com- 
manded by Captain Anderson. On the attempt 
to force Faribault to row, he positively refused 
to obey the order, claiming that, being brought 
up as a gentleman, he would under no consid- 
eration serve as a common oarsman. Captain 
Anderson reported to Colonel McCall this posi- 
tive declaration of their prisoner. The latter, 
instead of punishing Faribault, expressed his 
admiration of such pluck and firmness, sent 
for him to be brought before him, and treated 
him with much hospitality. During this time, 
Mrs. Faribault, not knowing her husband was 
a captive in the hands of the English, left 
Prairie du Chien for what is now Winona, fear- 
ing the place would be attacked by the 



English. The Indians, in the meantime, de- 
stroyed their home and sacked all their wealth 
and merchandise, valued at $15,000. They also 
carried away all the lead he had stored at 
what is now Dubuque. Shortly afterward Mr. 
Faribault, being an ardent admirer of Ameri 
can institutions, was naturalized as an 
American citizen, helped to organize a com- 
pany and was made first lieutenant. The 
Northwest Company, being unable to obtain 
license to continue operations in American 
territory, sold out the American branch of 
their company, and Joseph Rollette was made 
agent, and Faribault made arrangements with 
him foe a supply of merchandise to carry on 
his trade. He remained at Prairie du Chien 
for three years more, trading with the Indians. 
About this time Colonel Leavenworth was on 
his way to what is now Fort Snelling with 
troops. Meeting Faribault at his post, and 
being struck with the knowledge he possessed 
of the vicinity of the proposed new fort, and 
his extensive acquaintance with the Sioux 
nations and his influence over them, he soli- 
cited Faribault to remove his post to the 
junction of the Minnesota and the Mississippi 
livers. As there were more Indians at the 
latter place than about Prairie du Chien, he 
immediately decided to accompany Colonel 
Leavenworth. In 1820 Colonel Leavenworth 
assembled all the principal chiefs, and con- 
cluded a treaty in which the Indians stipulated 
on certain conditions, that the island called 
Pike's island — and sometimes known as Fari- 
bault island — containing some 300 acres, 
should be ceded to Faribault's wife, Pelagie 
Faribault, and her heirs. Faribault located 
on this island, and later the high water in the 
spring carried off all his belongings, and he 
was rescued with difficulty by Colonel Snell- 
ing's soldiers. Faribault then established 
himself with his family at Mendota, where he 
built a stone house and stone powder house, 
but did his trading with the Indians at Little 
Rapids on the Minnesota river. 

[Note. — It is claimed that General Sibley 
was the first one to build a stone house in the 
then Territory of Minnesota, but this must 
be an error of his biographer. The older 





/ 7fcw )?*(Pat? Uunx. 






BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



475 



grandsons of Jean 11 Faribault claim that the 
Sibley house was put up later — which fact is 
borne out by a Utter recently received from 
Monseigneur Eavoux, of St. Paul, in which he 
writes that it was his impression that Mr. 
Faribault's house was (lie older. Sibley's 
biographer is certainly mistaken in his state- 
ment that Alexander Faribault built a stone 
house similar to Sibley's two years later. The 
fact is, Alexander Faribault never built a stone 
house in Mendota. He erected a large white 
frame house further down the river, which was 
later torn down by the Chicago, Milwaukee 
& St. Paul Railroad Company, as it stood near 
their line when being graded.] 

Mr. Faribault went through many danger- 
ous adventures at the hands of the wild Sioux, 
and was severely wounded several times; but 
of vigorous constitution and temperate life, 
on each occasion he soon recovered. He was 
a devout Catholic, and was of considerable as- 
sistance in later years to the missionaries who 
braved the dangers of life among the Sioux 
by the influence which he obtained over the 
savages, through his honesty in his dealings 
with them and by his bravery. The L'Abbe 
Ravoux, in one of his contributions to the 
Minnesota Historical Society, mentioned Fari- 
bault and his son Alexander in complimentary 
terms and with gratitude for their friendship 
and hospitality. Jean Baptiste Faribault died 
at Faribault, Minnesota, August 20, 1S60. 

[The above biography is taken from "Les 
Canadiens de L'Ouest," by Joseph Tasse, 
translated from the French, condensed and 
revised by Mr. W. R. Faribault, of St. Louis, 
Missouri, a grandson of the subject.] 



WILLIAM F. DAVIDSON. 

William Fuson Davidson, better known and 
remembered throughout the Mississippi val- 
ley as ''Commodore" Davidson, was born in 
Lawrence county, Ohio, February I, 1S25, and 
died in St. Paul May 2<>, 1887. His father. Rev. 
William Davidson, who was of Scotch Irish 
descent, and whose parents were among the 
early settlers of Ohio, was a local Baptist 



preacher, but also engaged in flat-boating on 
the Ohio river; his wife, the mother of Com 
modore Davidson, was Sara Short. .Mr. 
Davidson was reared a pioneer boy and had 
little opportunity to acquire a scholastic 
education. Very early he exhibited a fond 
ness for life on the river and an adaptation 
io i he vocation of a boatman. He assisted his 
father in his voyages on the Ohio, which were 
chiefly between the port of Ironton, in his 
native county, and Cincinnati, and soon be- 
came very proficient. About the year 1840 
Lawrence county, Ohio, became prominent in 
the production of pig iron, and nearly all of 
this product was sent to Cincinnati in flat 
boats or keel-boats, which were sometimes 
towed by steamboats, but more commonly 
were propelled by the oars and sweeps of the 
crew. The work of a flat-boatman was toil 
some, but it was adventurous and often ex- 
citing, and had a certain charm for the young 
men of 1he country. Davidson was not only 
an accomplished boatman, but he possessed 
rare natural business qualities. He advanced 
steadily in his vocation, and at a comparatively 
early age he was the owner of several steam- 
boats and other river craft on the Ohio. In 
1854 he came to St. Paul, bringing with him 
the "Frank Steele," a staunch steamboat 
named for Hon. Franklin Steele, the well- 
known pioneer business man of Minnesota. 
Davidson at once began the work of navigat- 
ing the Minnesota river, being chiefly engaged 
in transporting the supplies and productions 
of the Indian trading posts on that stream. 
Later he added other river craft to his force 
and organized a steamboat company to run 
boats on i he upper Mississippi, and this re- 
sulted, iu 18C0, in the formation of the La 
Crosse & Minnesota Packet Company, which 
he controlled. The line was extended to 
Dubuque. Subsequently he organized the 
Northern Union Packet Company, and he then 
had under his control a fleet of fifteen boats on 
the upper Mississippi, of which he. was virtual- 
ly the commodore. During the boating seasons 
of 1868-69 other river transportation lines be- 
came important competitors of tin- Northern 
L T niou. After due negotiation between the re- 



476 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



spective interests a consolidation of the sev- 
eral lines was effected under the corporate 
name of the St. Louis & St. Paul Packet Com- 
pany, of which Commodore Davidson was the 
president and leading spirit. An immense 
business was done by this company for several 
years, and it practically controlled the traffic 
of the upper river. In the spring of 1ST0 Mr. 
Davidson, in the interest of the better execu- 
tion of his duties, removed to St. Louis, where 
he remained about ten years. He then re- 
turned to St. Paul, where he continued to re- 
side up to the time of his death. Meanwhile 
he had become engaged in other interests. At 
the close of the Civil War his attention had 
been attracted to the probabilities of profitable 
results from investments in St. Paul realty. 
From time to time thereafter he purchased a 
great deal of city property, which he retained 
and which in 1876 he commenced to improve. 
Among the many important structures he 
erected in the city — beginning in 1876 — were 
the brick block on the corner of Fourth and 
Jackson streets, which still bears his name, 
although it was once burned and was subse- 
quently rebuilt; the Union Block, at Fourth 
and Cedar; the Grand Opera House Block, on 
Wabasha, between Third and Fourth; the 
Court Block, on Fourth, between Wabasha 
and Cedar, and a block on the corner of Sixth 
and Jackson. He was interested with others 
in the old Music Hall Association, and built 
the first opera house proper in St. Paul. Dur- 
ing the later years of his life Mr. Davidson 
paid but little attention to the river traffic, 
owing to his large real estate interests, which 
demanded so much of his time and personal 
oversight. At the time of his death he was one 
of the largest real estate holders in St. Paul. 
He had other important interests to care for 
besides his landed property. He was one of 
the original and prominent stockholders in the 
old St. Paul & Sioux City Railroad, and was 
connected with its successor corporation, now 
known as the "Omaha." He was largely in- 
terested in the First National Bank of St. Paul, 
and in the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance 
Company, and was a prominent member of the 
Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Davidson was 



never an aspirant for public office. In politics 
he was a Republican. All through the War of 
the Rebellion he rendered valuable service to 
the Union cause by the use of his steamboats, 
which were always at the service of the Gov- 
ernment whenever wanted. He was emphat- 
ically a plain, matter-of-fact man, accustomed 
from his youth to hard work and constant ex- 
ertion. His tastes were simple, and he was 
altogether void of ostentation or a desire for 
vain glory. Although he made a reputation 
for his business enterprises in St. Paul, Mr. 
Davidson's chief distinction will rest for all 
time upon the history of his prominent con- 
nection with the navigation interests of the 
upper Mississippi between St. Louis and St. 
Paul. His large operations in this traffic con- 
tributed to an important extent to the up- 
building of St. Paul, and gave the city its first 
real commercial prosperity. At the age of 
fifty years Mr. Davidson was converted to a 
belief in the truths of revealed religion, and 
united with the Baptist church. Thereafter 
his conduct was consistent with his profes- 
sions. By his orders, which he caused to be 
rigidly enforced, the sale of liquor and all 
forms of gambling were abolished on every 
steamboat he controlled. By precept and ex- 
ample he encouraged moral and religious re- 
form in every manner possible in his adopted 
city and among his fellow-men generally, 
although he never paraded his virtues or did 
his good deeds purposely that they might "be 
seen of men." He was practically public- 
spirited in the best sense of the term. From 
his first advent into the country lie believed 
in the future of St. Paul, and proved his faith 
by his works. Perhaps a million dollars would 
not fairly cover the sums he expended from 
lirsl to last in the construction of his various 
business blocks. He was a pioneer in this 
great work of developing and improving the 
city at a time when other men of means hesi- 
tated and were apprehensive. After he had 
demonstrated the wisdom of his confidence and 
opened tlie way, it was easy for others to 
emulate his example. Commodore Davidson 
was married in 1856 to Sarah A. Johnston, a 
daughter of Judge Benjamin Johnston, a well- 



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BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



477 



known citizen of Southern Ohio. His widow is 
si ill living, and there are two surviving chil- 
dren of the marriage, Edward E. Davidson and 
Sarah M., the latter now .Mis. Watson P. Dav- 
idson, tff St. Paul. 



JOSHUA B. CULVER. 

The late Col. Joshua B. Culver was an old 
and honored resident of the city of Duluth. 
Tie was born on the 12th of September, 1830, 
in the quiet old town of Armenia, New York. 
His father, John < '. < !ulver, was also a native of 
the Empire State, ami for many years one 
of the more prominent citizens of Armenia. 
Joshua IJ. Culver, passed his childhood in 
the place of his birth, attending the public 
schools of the vicinity. At the early age of 
thirteen years he left his home in quesl of the 
opportunities afforded by newer sect ions of the 
country. His first location in the West was 
at Fort Atkinson, Iowa, and he subsequently 
lived in a number of different places, and tried 
his hand, now with greater, now with less sue 
cess, at various enterprises. Il was not until 
after the Civil War, in which he did duty from 
beginning to end, that he took up his perma- 
nent abode in Duluth. In 1854 he became nsso- 
ciated with the American Fur Trading 
Company, at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, ami two 
years later he engaged in the mercantile busi- 
ness in the two cities of St. Paul, .Minnesota, 
and Superior, Wisconsin. In L858 lie received 
the appointment of Receiver in the land office 
at Buchanan, Minnesota, and upon the expira- 
tion of his term of service in that capacity, he 
located at Duluth, and followed the lumber 
business temporarily at that point, removing 
heme to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Upon the 
breaking out of the Civil War he enlisted in 
the Union army, and soon after entering the 
service was appointed first lieutenant and 
adjutant of the Thirteenth Michigan Infantry. 
Later, in the year 18<!2. he was advanced to the 
rank of major, and in the following year re- 
ceived two promotions, to the respective ranks 
of lieutenant colonel and colonel. During the 
course of the Rebellion Colonel Culver hail 



thorough experience of the hardships of war- 
fare, and the excitements and dangers of active 
service. The numerous engagements in which 
li" participated are given below in the order 
in which they occurred. During the year L862 
he fought in the battle of Shiloli, Tennessee; 

those of Farmington, Owl Creek and Corinth, 
Mississippi, helping, also, to sustain the lane 
ous siege of Corinth from .May liitli to 31st; 
Stevenson, Alabama; Munfordsville, Perry- 
ville and Danville, Kentucky; Gallatin, .Mill 
Creek, Lavergne, Stewart's Creek and two en 
gagements at Stone River, Tennessee. In the 
year L863: two more bailies at Stone River, 
and one each at Eaglesville, Pelham, Lookout 
Valley and Lookout .Mountain. Tennessee; the 
three days of hard fighting at Chickamauga, 
Georgia; Chattanooga and .Missionary Ridge, 
Tennessee. |„ lstif; Florence, Alabama, and 
four days of conflicl at Savannah. Georgia. In 
L865: Catawba Liver, South Carolina; Averys 
boro and Bentonville, North Carolina. Colonel 
Culver was mustered out with his regiment 
and honorably discharged from the service on 
the 25th of .Inly, 1865. Two days later the 
Thirteenth Michigan arrived at Jackson, in the 
State it represented, where it was paid oil' and 
disbanded. Colonel Culver had been mar- 
ried, in the year 1852, at Prairie du Chien, to 
.Miss S. V. Woodman. Eight children were 
born of their union, all of whom are living. 
Colonel Culver was the first mayor of the city 
id' Duluth, and so w isely did he administer the 
municipal affairs as to win the general esteem 
and affection of the community. He felt much 
justifiable pride in the city which he had 
chosen lor his home and field of labor, and is 
remembered by its residents as a loyal veteran 
of the Grand Army and a true hearted citizen 
and official of Duluth. 



GEORGE W. FREEMAN. 

George W. Freeman, president of the C. 
Gotzian & Company boot and shoe manufac 
tory, of St. Paul, is an Englishman by birth. 
the time and place of his nativity having been 
.May L'l. 1845, and St. Ives in Ilnntingtonshire. 



478 



BIOGKAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



The first eight rears of his life were passed 
in his native country, at the close of which he 
emigrated to the United States with his 
parents, Joseph and Sarah (Kingston) Free- 
man. The first location of the family was 
Cleveland, Ohio, where they remained for two 
years; but the father's pioneer spirit was at- 
tracted by the possibilities of the great north- 
western frontier region, and, in 1855, he pushed 
on to Minnesota. He purchased and settled 
upon a large section of land in Ramsey county, 
to the cultivation of which he devoted himself 
for the remainder of his life. His death oc- 
curred in the year 1862. The early education 
of George W. Freeman, which had been begun 
in the mother country and continued in Ohio, 
was completed in the public schools of St. 
Paul. Ambitious to enter upon his business 
career, he laid aside his text books at the age 
of sixteen in favor of practical work. His 
youthful energies were not, as is too frequently 
the case, dissipated by years of discouraging 
endeavor to adapt himself to incongenial or 
impracticable lines of business. Hitting at the 
start upon an industry which he was satisfied 
to follow as a life work, he began at once to 
accumulate the experience which has enabled 
him in later years to become so successful a 
manager of business interests on a large scale. 
His first position, which he entered in 1861, 
was in connection with Lewis Semper, a boot 
and shoe dealer on Third street, St. Faul. He 
remained with Mr. Semper for nine years, leav- 
ing him at the end of that period to avail him- 
self of the larger opportunities offered him by 
the Conrad Gotzian boot and shoe manufactur- 
ing establishment. This latter house he repre- 
sented upon the road for some eight years, and 
was then taken into partnership by Mr. Got- 
zian. Upon the death of the senior member 
of the firm, in 1887, Mr. Freeman was made' 
president and general manager of the C. Got- 
zian Company, which position he has filled to 
the present time. No better idea of the abil- 
ities of Mr. Freeman can be conveyed than 
that revealed by the development of the busi- 
ness over which he has presided. It was 
already in a flourishing condition at the time 
he left the road to become a member of the 



concern, its sales amounting to about $65,000 
a year; but this seems a very modest status 
when compared with the present one, which is 
computed in millions, while to meet this enor- 
mous demand for the goods of the C. Gotzian 
Company, whose reputation is established as 
the most progressive boot and shoe houses 
in the Northwest. Nearly six hundred per- 
sons are regularly employed in its factories. 
Mr. Freeman has devoted himself assiduously 
to the management of the business, his atten- 
tion not having been diverted by other enter- 
prises of magnitude or by political aspirations. 
He has, however, been a member of the fire 
board for quite a number of years, having for 
five years served as its active president; and 
he has found time, inclination and means to 
materially promote numerous public projects 
looking toward the advancement of the city of 
St. Paul. Mr. Freeman was married on Sep- 
tember 24, 1868, to Mary I. Doney, of St. Paul. 
Seven children were born to them, whose 
names, in the order of their birth, are as fol- 
lows: Stella M., George J., Olive L., Maud V., 
( Jharlie I)., Clarence K. and Harold C. Mr. Free- 
man is a Mason of the thirty-second degree, 
and is also a member of the order of Elks. 



WILLIAM D. LOWRY. 

Although he who bore this name has been 
deceased since the year 1863, it is still a 
familiar and honored one to those older citi- 
zens who are acquainted with the early history 
of the city of Rochester, Minnesota ; for the 
subject of this sketch was to a large degree 
identified with that history, and with the very 
foundation of the frontier settlement from 
which has been developed the present nourish- 
ing municipality. William Dundas Lowry was 
born in 181!l at Watson's Run, Crawford 
county, Pennsylvania. His paternal ancestors 
a few generations back, escaping from the ter- 
rors of religious persecution, had emigrated to 
the State of his nativity from their home in 
the north of Ireland. His great-grandfather 
had been beheaded for loyalty to his convic- 
tions, and the wife of this martyr, being a 




The Century Publishing <S tiyraviny Co C/ucayo- 

(MrQ t LUThy 




BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



479 



woman of means and determination, fitted out 
a ship and, together with her eleven sons, 
crossed to our shores, settling 011 a large tract 
of land in the northeastern part of Pennsyl- 
vania, which had been ceded to her. But a 
family of Hollanders, as it appears, had se- 
cured a claim to this same property at a 
previous time, and there ensued a struggle over 
its proprietorship, which was still rife in the 
boyhood of our subject's father, Morrow 
Lowry, who, at the climax of the trouble en- 
deavored to escape down a hill, concealed in 
a rolling barrel. This migrating barrel was 
captured on suspicion, however, and its hap- 
less contents taken in custody to Philadelphia. 
A bolder and more successful plan of escape 
was adopted by the mother of Morrow, who, 
leaving her baby behind, swam across the 
Monongahela river and made her way to Phila- 
delphia, where she laid the facts before 
President Jefferson and won the release of her 
family. Tins episode enhanced the promi- 
nence of the Lowrys in Pennsylvania, and 
Jefferson Lowry, one of the sons of Morrow, 
was for many years a man of public affairs, 
holding the office of judge up to the time of 
his death, while other members of the family 
were figures of about ecpial importance in the 
State. William D. Lowry, however, did not 
remain at home to take advantage of historic 
prestige, but set out to shift for himself at 
the age of twelve years, and worked for a 
number of years on boats that plied back 
and forth on tin 1 great lakes. As early as 1849 
— when about thirty years of age — he located 
in Wisconsin, after which he returned to 
the East. But he had acquired a taste for 
Western life, and in the year 1854 came to 
Minnesota. He settled in Olmstead county, 
of which the city of Orinoco was then the 
county seat, and purchased a tract of land, 
which was a portion of the site of the present 
city of Rochester. There was then no sugges- 
tion of the city of to-day at this point, some 
three or four houses being the sum total of 
human habitations, constituting the nucleus 
of a village. Mr. Lowry was speedily drawn 
into the public affairs of Minnesota, and ac- 
cepted a nomination for the Legislature. His 



seat was contested, on the ground that he was 
not qualified by a sufficiently long residence 
within the State; but this objection was over- 
ruled, and in the following autumn he was 
declared elected State Representative. While 
in the House he introduced a bill for the trans- 
fer of the county seat from Orinoco to Roches- 
ter, ;i proviso of which, was that the Winona 
& St. Peter Railroad should run through I lie 
latter town. Mr. Lowry took a deep and many- 
sided interest in the place of his residence. 
and freely expended both money and personal 
effort in promoting its development to a place 
among the most thrifty and progressive towns 
of the Slate. Another town site in which Mr. 
Lowry took an active interest was that of St. 
Peter, and he was instrumental, also, in secur- 
ing the passage of a bill for the location of the 
capitol at that place, which bill after its 
passage was stolen by Joe Roulette of his- 
toric fame. Mrs. Lowry — wife of Wil- 
liam D. — was formerly Miss Elmira Cora 
Cutler, a native of Pennsylvania. Five chil- 
dren were born of their marriage, as follows: 
Milnor R., Stewart R., Ella S., William 1)., Jr., 
and George B. Of these all are residents of 
.Minnesota with the exception of Stewart R., 
who lives at Spokane, Washington. The 
homes of Milnor R., George II. and Ella S. (now 
Mrs. Allen) are at Fergus Falls, while the 
namesake of our subject resides in Minne- 
apolis. 



WILLIAM G. WARD. 

The Hon. William Grosvenor Ward, who for 

more than a quarter of a century was a promi- 
nent citizen of Southern Minnesota, was born 
in Oneida county, New York, December 26, 
1S27, and died at his home in Waseca, Minne- 
sota, September 21, 18112. His early years 
were passed on a farm. He was educated 
mainly in a select school at Booneville, New 
York, completing an advanced course by the 
aid of the salary which he received as a tutor 
in the primary departments of the school. 
From boyhood he was of scholarly tastes, and 
he spent eight years in the study of the Greek 



480 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



and Latin classics, although his favorite study 
was mathematics, in which science he was 
notably proficient. When he was a mere boy, 
or at the age of seventeen, he commenced liis 
career in civil engineering with 8. B. Williams 
on the Black River Canal, in New York, and 
remained with Mr. Williams and his successor, 
D. C. Genney, for live years and three months, 
engaged in canal work. At that period the 
canals of New York were under the control of 
the State government, and the engineers on 
these public improvements were political ap- 
pointees. Young Ward was a Whig, and when 
the State administration became Democratic 
he was discharged. A great part of his after 
life was spent in railroad building. Soon after 
leaving canal work he became chief engineer 
and roadmaster of the Long Island Railroad, 
and held these positions for several years, dur- 
ing which time he built the Hempstead and the 
Hicksville branches. For two years he was 
superintendent of car and engine repairing for 
the entire system, with his office at Brooklyn, 
while the shops were at Jamaica Plains. Leav- 
ing the Long Island he engaged with the Lake 
Ontario & Auburn road, and was first assistant 
engineer to his former superior in the canal 
service, Mr. S. B. Williams. A year later he 
went to the Utica & Black River road as first 
assistant engineer to another former chief, Mr. 
D. C. Genney. In 1S56 Mr. Ward resigned from 
the Utica & Black River on account of pro- 
tracted ill-health, and went to Wisconsin. The 
same year he became chief engineer of the old 
Watertown & Madison Railroad, now a part of 
the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul system. 
Subsequently he had charge of the construc- 
tion of the Oconomowoc & Columbia road, but 
in 1858, owing to the financial panic of the 
previous year, all railroad building in the 
Northwest was suspended. Mr. Ward now 
began the study of law. After six months of 
reading with a law firm at Madison he con- 
tinued his studies under such accomplished 
instructors as Judge George B. Smith and 
Senator Matt. H. Carpenter, and was finally 
admitted to the bar by Judge Harlow S. Orion; 
the clerk of the court when he was admitted 
was Lucius Fairchild, afterwards a general in 



the army, Governor of the State, etc. Imme- 
diately upon his admission Mr. Ward began 
the practice. He was engaged in defending 
a man charged with murder when the news 
came that Sumter had been fired on. Amid 
the excitement occasioned by the war news 
the court adjourned, and the trial was never 
fairly finished. Mr. Ward, however, secured 
the pardon of his client, as the story is told, 
although it is more probable that the case 
against him was dismissed, and this ended Mr. 
Ward's experience as a lawyer in Wisconsin. 
Later, in 1801, he was appointed chief clerk of 
the Madison postoffice, under Hon. E. W. Keys, 
and held the place for three years. He was 
exempt from military duty, but he did good 
work for the Union cause by securing volun- 
teers for nearly every regiment and battery 
that went to the front from Wisconsin. In 
1804 he, in company with Maj. John W. Blake, 
built and for fourteen months operated a saw- 
mill on the Little Wolf river in Wisconsin, 
finally selling the mill to the Wisconsin Manu- 
facturing Company. Mr. Ward came to 
Minnesota late in the year 1865, and took 
charge, as chief engineer, of the construction 
of the Winona & St. Peter Railroad, which 
work he pushed to its completion in 1868. He 
located at Waseca, and from the laying out 
of the town this was ever after his home. Be 
was one of the original proprietors of t he town, 
became identified with it and invested largely 
in its realty and its other material interests. 
He was one of the organizers of the People's 
Bank and its president from its organization 
until his death. He was also among the first 
stockholders of the First National Bank of St. 
Paul, and an intimate friend of its president, 
the late Horace Thompson; was one of the 
first to engage in manufacturing in Waseca, 
and built the first flouring mill and operated 
it for some years. For a time he edited the 
Waseca Radical. His ability and general 
worth were appreciated and recognized by his 
fellow-citizens, and in due time he was called 
to public positions. For a long time he was 
a member of the city council of Waseca. In 
1872 he was elected to the State Senate for 
a term of four years. In 188G he was again 




The- Century PubUshUv/ £ Bymi'iny Co Chicago- 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



481 



elected and served another term, which ex- 
pired in 1800. While in his Legislative posi- 
tion he was prominent and influential and did 
excellent service for his constituents and his 
State. In 1SS0 he was the Republican candi- 
date for Congress from his district, but owing 
to dissension in his party he failed of election, 
although he carried his home county, Waseca, 
by a good majority, lb- was popular with all 
parties, and at one time was solicited by the 
Democrats to become their candidate for an 
important State office, although he was always 
a pronounced Republican. He was active in 
politics, and a frequent and effective speaker 
in political campaigns. .Mr. Ward was an en- 
terprising citizen, and managed his personal 
affairs intelligently and successfully. At his 
death he was one of the largest real estate 
owners in Waseca county. His large farm of 
71)0 acres, west of the city of Waseca, is still 
owned by his family. He took great interest 
in agricultural affairs, ami was proud to call 
himself a farmer. He hail a large acquaint- 
ance, and few men were as well known 
throughout the State. Personally, Senator 
Ward was of striking presence, lie was about 
six feet in height, of symmetrical build, and 
his average weight was about 180 pounds. His 
complexion was fair, his eyes blue, and his 
hair dark brown. He was a ripe scholar, a man 
of large information, and was a fluent conver- 
sationalist and a forcible public speaker. Of 
his characteristics as a man no better descrip- 
tion may be made than that given by his friend, 
Maj. John W. Blake, now of Dalton, Georgia, 
who knew him personally for more than thirty 
years. Major Blake writes: 

"I believe that no man of more noble and 
generous impulses, or more kindly heart, or 
greater sympathy for the unfortunate, or char- 
ity for the erring, ever lived; and these were 
not merely sentimental trails, for whenever a 
good cause sought his aid his heart always 
made generous drafts upon his pocket. He 
will long live in the memory of many of the 
poor and unfortunate, who will ever count him 
as the kindliest friend of their lives. He was 
straightforward, plain-spoken, resolute and 
brave in every sense of the word ; he hated all 
shame, meanness and hypocrisy, and resorted 



to no devious ways to accomplish his purposes, 
but always acted the manly part. His friends 
were legion; his enemies few, and those few 
he fought in the open and fought fair, striking 
straight from the shoulder and full in the face. 
He possessed a good classical and scientific 
education, and throughout an active and busy 
life remained an ardent student, especially iii 
those lines relating to his profession, that of 
a civil engineer, in which he ranked high. He 
read widely, and was intelligent upon all im- 
portant matters of his time. He was patriotic, 
public-spirited, a steadfast friend through sun 
shine and darkest storm. He was an honest 
man. Could words give greater praise I could 
truthfully add them." 

Mr. Ward was twice married. His first mar- 
riage was in December, 1852, to Miss Martha 
E. Dodge. She died at Jefferson, Wisconsin, 
in November, 1865, leaving two children, 
named Clarence T., now of Redwood Falls, 
Minnesota, and Annie L., now Mrs. E. A. Hen 
drickson, of SI. Paul. On December 14, 1867, 
he married Miss Ella ('. Trowbridge, daughter 
of Hon. I. C. Trowbridge. Surviving this mar- 
riage are I he widow and four children. The 
names of the latter are Mattie E., now Mrs. 
D. S. Cummings, of Waseca; Roscoe Percy 
Ward, cashier of I he People's Bank of Waseca; 
Florence T., now Mrs. < '. II. Watson, of 
Waukesha, Wisconsin, and Earl W. Ward, of 
Waseca. 



PIERCE BUTLER. 



While still in his early prime, the subject of 
this sketch has attained to a prestige in the 
legal circles of the Northwest which makes 
his brief history well worthy of permanent 
record. Pierce Butler, Esq., is a native of 
Minnesota, born in Dakota county on the 17th 
of March, 1866. He is the son of Patrick and 
Mary (Gaffney) Butler, both of whom were 
natives of Ireland, but who came to this coun- 
try about the middle of the passing century 
and located in Minnesota, the elder Butler 
being one of the pioneer farmers of this State. 
Pierce acquired a fundamental education in 
the public schools of his home county, and in 
due time became a student at Carleton College. 



482 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



He graduated from this institution in June, 
1887, and in the month of October of the fol- 
lowing year was admitted to the bar iu the 
State of Minnesota. Early in 1891 Mr. Butler 
was appointed assistant county attorney for 
Ramsey county by T. D. O'Brien, of St. Paul. 
He did duty in tins capacity for two years, 
then, in November, 1892, he was elected to the 
more responsible post of county attorney, and 
two years later was re-elected to the same 
office; and during this double term he distin- 
guished himself for the efficiency of his service. 
In the year 181X5, Mr. Butler entered into a 
partnership with Homer C. Eller and Jared 
How, under the style of Eller, How & Butler. 
After the senior partner died, the firm, as How 
& Butler, continued and flourished until Sep- 
tember 1, 1899, being dissolved on that date in 
consequence of Mr. Butler's appointment to the 
position of general attorney for the Chicago, 
St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway, 
which he holds at the present time. Mr. But- 
ler is a family man, having been married, on 
the 25th of August, 1891, to Miss Annie M. 
Cronin, of St. Paul. Six children — four sons 
and two daughters — have come to add to the 
joys and responsibilities of our subject, whose 
names in the order of their birth are as fol- 
lows: Pierce, William, Mary, Leo, Margaret 
and Francis. The enviable position and repu- 
tation which Pierce Butler enjoys to-day have 
been to a very large degree won through his 
own earnest efforts to make the most of his 
natural abilities, and the following commenda- 
tory words of Judge Brill, of St. Paul, but 
voice the general estimate of his capacities and 
achievements: "Mr. Butler is considered by 
the bar and members of the profession as one 
of the ablest young attorneys of the North- 
west, and as the most efficient county attorney 
that Ramsey county has ever had. He is a 
good trial lawyer, before either judge or jury." 



WILLIAM L. KELLY. 



William Louis Kelly, one of the judges of 
the District Court of Minnesota for the Second 
District, was born August 27, 18:'.7, at Spring- 



field, Washington county, Kentucky. He 
comes of a long line of distinguished jurists. 
His father, Col. Charles C. Kelly, of that pro- 
fession, was clerk of the Circuit Court of his 
county, and in 1849 sat in the Constitutional 
< '(invention of Kentucky. His grandfather, 
Hon. William Louis Kelly, an Irish exile of 
1787, settled in Kentucky in 1802, and two 
years thereafter was elevated to the Circuit 
Bench, where lie presided for thirty-three 
years. His grandmother was a sister of the 
Hon. John Rowan, of Louisville, one of Ken- 
tucky's most distinguished jurists, and some 
time a Senator in Congress from that Stale. 
On his mother's side he is descended, through 
Major George Bourne, from an old Maryland 
family, settled there in the days of Lord Balti- 
more. Judge Kelly received a good education, 
literary and classic, primarily at home from 
his father and mother, seconded by the ad- 
vantages of an excellent village school. In 
1854 his father's early death called him to 
the head of the family. Removing to Louis- 
ville in 1855, he found employment in the 
Chancery Court and soon after in the post- 
office. In the fall of 1855, he was made assist- 
ant postmaster, which position he held until 
1864, when he resigned to enter the postal mili- 
tary service. Meanwhile he managed to read 
law, and in 185!) was graduated from the Law 
Department of the University of Louisville. 
In 18(54, Mr. Kelly was commissioned a special 
agent of the post-office department and placed 
in sole charge of the mail service in the mili- 
tary division of the .Mississippi. In this ca- 
pacity he was with General Sherman on the 
Atlanta campaign, and saw constant service 
in the field until the close of the war. His 
duties called him into and through the States 
of Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. 
Mississippi and Louisiana, and, after the war 
closed. Texas. As the Judge puts it. he was 
with the army but not of it — and, though with- 
out military rank, had under his command 
nearly a regiment of men. Having married 
Rosi Warren, a Kentucky girl (still beside 
him, an honored wife and mother), in 1865 In- 
settled in Minnesota. For three years he lived 
on and cultivated a farm upon Lake Harriet. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



#3 



In 1869 be removed to St. Paul, where lie was 
engaged, for the most part, in literary pursuits, 
among other things as editor of the North- 
western Chronicle. In 1878 he began to prac- 
tice law as an exclusive occupation. In 1887 
he was appointed by Governor McGill, to a 
vacancy upon the Ramsey county District 
Bench and has been twice reelected by 
the people. He is known as a conscientious 
and fearless judge as well as a persistent and 
careful worker. He lias a good record for 
number and importance and usual correctness 
of his decisions. Like all men he makes some 
mistakes, but is always glad to have his rul- 
ings and decisions reviewed, and errors, if any, 
corrected by the Supreme Court. His decisions 
have embraced every branch of the law. Some 
of them have attracted more than ordinary at- 
tention — notably in this respect his judgment 
(approved by the United States Supreme 
Court) enjoining and forbidding the proposed 
consolidation and absorption of the Northern 
Pacific Railway with and by the Great North- 
ern, in the case wherein the Slate of Minnesota 
was the plaintiff and the latter corporation the 
defendant. Among the trials of more than 
local public interest at which he has presided 
may be mentioned those of the so-called bank 
robbers, Fleury and others, in 1893, and re- 
cently of Rose, the notorious forger and direc- 
tory swindler operating in ilie Twin Cities. 
These and other criminal cases tried by him 
show him to be merciful and tender with the 
simply erring, bul prepared to handle the pro- 
fessional rascal without gloves. 



THOMAS I>. O'BRIEN. 

Thomas Dillon O'Brien, of St. Paul, was 
born at La Point, Madeline Island, Lake Su- 
perior, Wisconsin, February 14, 1859, the son 
of Dillon and Elizabeth (Kelly) O'Brien. His 
ancestors on both his father's and mother's 
side were Irish, people of education, refinement 
and good standing. In 1863 his parents, with 
their family, moved to St. Anthony. Minne- 
sota, and after a residence there of two years, 
removed to St. Paul. Thomas attended the 



public schools and also received instructions 
from his parents, and in April, 1877, began the 
study of law with Young & Newell at St. Paul, 
and was admitted to the bar of the Supreme 
Court of the Slate April 17, 1880. Shortly 
afterwards he became a member of the firm of 
O'Brien, Eller & O'Brien, composed of John D. 
O'Brien, Homer C. Eller and T. D. O'Brien. 
Subsequently he withdrew from the firm and 
formed a co-partnership with his brother, C. D. 
O'Brien, under the firm name of C. D. & Thos. 
D. O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien was assistant city 
attorney of St. Paul for several years, while 
W. 1'. Murray held the office of city attorney. 
He was elected county attorney of Ramsey 
county in 1890, and served from January 1, 
1891, to January 1, 1893, when he returned to 
his private practice, having declined a re-elec- 
tion. Mr. < »' Hi itii has taken an active interest 
in the militia of the State, and was for two 
years captain of Battery A, of the Minnesota 
National Guard. In politics he is a Democrat 
and an active participant in the promotion of 
the interests of his party. A prominent citizen 
who has known Mr. O'Brien intimately for 
many years says: 

'•As a lawyer, Mr. O'Brien is careful and pru- 
dent in the direction of his client's affairs, as 
well as adroit, persuasive and forcible in the 
trial of I heir cases. A high sense of justice 
enables him to know and to state the law with 
accuracy and directness. The fairness of his 
concessions readily and cheerfully made to 
his opponents on all points not in serious con 
troversy, frequently wins favor for him with 
judge and jury. He has conducted many trials 
of importance which have attracted great pub- 
lic attention and has on many occasions dis- 
played unusual powers as an advocate. He is 
always candid with the court and courteous in 
his intercourse with other members of the bar 
and is held in high esteem by both. He is 
active in politics, but is not a place-seeker or 
spoilsman. He seeks the public welfare by the 
best methods. He tries to persuade and con- 
vince the voters (hat his party's cause is right 
and best for I he country, but never attempts 
to cheat or deceive them. His toleration of the 
views of those who disagree with him. as to 
men or measures, enables him to judge ac 
curately of the tendency and strength of public 
opinion. His advice, therefore, is valuable and 



4*4 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



is often soughl by politicians and public men. 
Mori' againsl his will than otherwise, he con- 
sented to become the Minnesota member of the 
National Democratic Committee in 1896, and 
as such directed a clean and vigorous eontest 
in the campaign of that year, and his efforts 
and advice contributed much to make the suc- 
cess of his party in the State election of L898. 
Personally he is genial and attractive. His 
fondness for his friends and his hospitality are 
well known. No man has a kindlier heart or 
a higher sense of honor." 

Mr. O'Brien was married April lit, 1888, at 
Philadelphia, to Miss Mary Cruice, daughter of 
Dr. W. E. Cruice, of that city. They have four 
children, Eleanor, Dillon, Louise and William 
R. They are members of the Roman Catholic 
church. 



JOHN H. STEVENS. 

The first settler on the west bank of the 
Mississippi, on the site of the city of Minne- 
apolis, was t'ol. John H. Stevens. Since he 
came to Minnesota and took up his farm over- 
looking the Falls of St. Anthony, in 1849, he 
has been one of the most conspicuous and 
interesting figures in Minneapolis affairs. Few 
men have the privilege of seeing great cities 
built up on the sites of their modest frontier 
homesteads. Colonel Stevens has not only 
seen this, bu1 he has been an active partici- 
pant in the upbuilding process. Colonel Ste- 
vens is a native of Canada, though his parents 
and ancestors for generations were New Eng- 
land people. He traces his line back to Cap- 
tain Stevens, who served with honor iu King- 
Philip's war during the early Colonial times. 
Gardner Stevens, Colonel Stevens' father, was 
a native and a citizen of Vermont. He mar- 
ried Deborah Harrington, also of Vermont, 
who was the only daughter of Dr. John Har- 
rington, who was a surgeon in the Colonial 
army during the Revolution. John was their 
second son. He was born on June 13, 1820. 
The boy was educated at the common schools 
in the East, and in the public schools in Wis- 
consin and Illinois, in which latter State he 
cast his first vote, in 1842. During his early 
manhood the Mexican War broke out. and 



Colonel Stevens enlisted and served through- 
out the war. For a year or so after the close 
of the war he remained in Wisconsin and Illi- 
nois, and in 1st!) came to Minnesota. Upon 
arriving at the Falls of St. Anthony, Colonel 
Stevens formed a business partnership with 
Franklin Steele, who had a store at the little 
hamlet on the east bank of the river. But the 
young man saw clearly the advantages of a site 
on the west bank. This ground was then a 
military reservation, and repeated attempts to 
secure permission to settle upon it had been 
unsuccessful. Colonel Stevens, however, final- 
ly secured official leave, and at once took up 
a farm on the site now covered by the heavy 
business portion of Minneapolis and the great 
flour milling district. The following year he 
brought a young wife from Illinois to this new 
farm and established the first home in Minne- 
apolis proper, or the original Minneapolis. For 
a time Colonel Stevens worked this riverside 
farm, but it soon became evident that the 
ground was needed for a town. He was a 
practical surveyor, and with generous public 
spirit he platted the laud to which he had 
already become attached, laid out city lots and 
blocks, and subsequently gave away many of 
them to people who would occupy them. From 
that time on Colonel Stevens was for many 
years foremost in furthering the interests of 
the city and State, lie took a lively interest 
in the promotion of immigration and the explo- 
ration and settling of the country west of 
Minneapolis, in those days an almost unbroken 
wilderness. Many incidents in his long life in 
the State are of absorbing interest. For sev- 
eral years after he built his house on the river 
bank it was the center of the life of the young 
community. A liberal hospitality was dis- 
pensed. Immigrants, neighbors, hunters and 
explorers, and often the Indians themselves, 
were entertained at that old house. In it 
churches, societies, lodges and boards were or- 
ganized. The old building, after being moved 
from place to place as the city developed, has 
at last found a resting place, appropriately, 
near the Falls of Minnehaha, in the beautiful 
park now belonging to the city, whither it 
was moved by the school children of Minneap- 




-""~" f *~ 




-p 




'. 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



48S 



olis in the spring of L896. Colonel Stevens' 
love for agriculture and everything pertaining 
to the farm, was of enormous benefit to the 
young farming community of Minnesota. His 
influence was felt in the establishment of the 
agricultural and horticultural associations, 
and in the promotion of good methods of farm- 
ing and stock raising. He was the first man 
to bring thoroughbred stock into the State. 
After his farm at the Falls was made a city 
site, he carried on farming at other places, at 
one time having a large establishment at < Hen- 
coo, Minnesota. His lifelong devotion to agri- 
culture was honored by his election to the 
office of president of the .Minnesota State 
Agricultural Society. Though never seeking 
office, Colonel Stevens was in earlier times 
called to serve the public in several official 
capacities. He was the first register of deeds 
of Hennepin county, and served for several 
terms in both branches of the State Legisla- 
ture. During the Indian uprising, as brigadier 
general of the militia, he commanded troops 
and volunteers sent to the front. With all his 
cares and duties he has, during his busy life, 
found time to do a great deal of writing, and 
has owned a number of papers. Among those 
which he lias conducted or edited were the 
St. Anthony Express, The Chronicle, Glen- 
coe Register, Farmer and Gardener, Farm- 
ers' Tribune, and Farm, Slock and Home. 
In 1890 he published a book entitled "Per- 
sonal Recollections of Minnesota and Its 
People, and Early History of Minneapolis." 
He also contributed several chapters to the 
publication known as "Atwater's History of 
Minneapolis." Colonel Stevens was married, 
on May 1, 1850, to Miss Frances Hellen Miller, 
a daughter of Abner Miller, of Westmoreland, 
New York. They were married at Rockford, 
Illinois. They have had six children. Mary 
Elizabeth, the first white child born in Min- 
neapolis, died in her seventeenth year, Catk- 
rine D., the second child, is the wife of 1'. 1''. 
Winston. The third daughter. Sarah, is de- 
ceased. Gardner, the fourth child, and only 
son. is a civil engineer. Orma, the fifth, is 
now Mrs. Wm. L. Peck. The sixth, Frances 
Helen, is married to Isaac II. Chase, 



of Rapid City, South Dakota. It is character 
istic of Colonel Stevens that, though comfort- 
ably off at the present time, he has never made 
his wonderful opportunities for personal profit 
a means of amassing wealth. The public spirit 
and broad generosity of the man have made 
such a course practically impossible for him. 



MILLEDGE B. SHEFFIELD. 

The late Milledge Benjamin Sheffield, of 
Faribault, president of the Sheffield Milling 
Company, was born in Cornwallis-, Nova Sen 
tia, on the 2nd of May, 1830. lie was extracted 
from sturdy stock — mingled English and 
Scotch on each ancestral line — and his phys- 
ical inheritance, to start with, was a magnifi- 
cent one. The Sheffield family, of which there 
were numerous representatives in the little 
Northeastern peninsula, was distinguished for 
its tall and nobly developed specimens of man- 
hood; and the subject of this sketch was no 
exception to the rule. Measuring over six feet 
in height, finely proportioned, dignified in car- 
riage and manners, and wearing his dark, 
ruddy beard full and flowing, the keen glance 
of his grey eye completed the effect of an unu- 
sually commanding presence, causing him to 
be frequently referred to as "a gentleman of 
the old school." His parents, Benjamin IS. and 
Fanny (Steadman) Sheffield, were also natives 
of Nova Scotia; and the father was a man of 
consequence in the home community. He was 
well-to-do, being the owner of a variety of 
properties, including mills, foundry, machine 
shops and farm lands. His ambitions were 
modest, however, and he never sought nor 
filled public office; but he was held in highest 
esteem for his native ability and absolute 
rectitude of character. Blessed in such a fa- 
ther, and surrounded by elevating and refining 
home influences, Milledge B. Sheffield grew to 
manh 1. His school training was but medi- 
ocre, being limited to the common-school 
course of his native town; but. all things 
considered, he had a far safer and surer equip- 
ment for a successful life battle than has the 
average college bred man. In June, 1865, Mr. 



4 86 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



Sheffield, who had now been married for some 
years, came, with his family, to Minnesota to 
join his brother, Sumner A. Sheffield, who 
some two years prior to this time had located 
upon a tract of land mow the county poor 
farm) near Faribault. Milledge B. remained 
with his brother but a short time, however, 
soon moving into the city and establishing 
there a retail grocery business. In Faribault 
lie quickly gained a reputation as a thorough- 
going, honorable and generous business man, 
and his honesty proved a very good policy in- 
deed. The small capital which he had brought 
to the West expanded until he was able to 
purchase an interest in the Walcott Flour 
Mills, located about four miles from Faribault. 
A little later he bought out his partners, took 
his son into partnership and enlarged and im- 
proved the mills, which were operated for a 
number of years. November 31, 1895, the 
Walcott mills were destroyed by fire, and 
were not rebuilt on the old site; but Mr. Shef- 
field erected at another point a large mill, and 
with his son organized the Sheffield Milling 
Company, of which he became president, and 
of whose stock he was nearly exclusive own- 
er. These mills, which were equipped with 
thoroughly modern machinery, had a daily 
capacity of one thousand barrels of Hour, 
and furnished employment to a small army of 
men; and they speedily became the nucleus of 
a village, called Sheffield Mills, which sprang 
up to furnish convenient homes for the em- 
ployes and their families. Nor was this the 
extent of Mr. Sheffield's enterprise in the flour 
industry. He acquired from the ( !rown Milling 
Company their plant at Morristown, becoming 
interested, also, in the construction of grain 
elevators along railroad lines through south- 
em Minnesota. Iowa and South Dakota. Mr. 
Sheffield was a man of large interests and 
successful achievement; but business did not 
absorb the whole man, or even the best of him. 
He had a deep, loving nature, most perfectly 
enshrined in the home sanctuary. To many 
men marriage is a mere incident among others; 
but marriage and the founding of home was 
to him the golden event of his life. That event 
was consummated on the 8th of March. I860, 



the woman of his choice being Rachel Tup- 
per, own cousin of Sir Charles Tupper, 
secretary of the Dominion of Canada. The 
Tupper family was then, as now, very promi- 
nent in Canada, and the culture and refine- 
ments of Rachel, which had graced the position 
in which she had been reared, shone no less 
brightly in her wedded home. Three children 
— Benjamin B., Frances and Harold — came to 
bless this union, but dark wings soon hovered 
over the happy family. Shortly after their re- 
moval to Faribault Harold died, and upon the 
5th of October, 1870, Mrs. Sheffield was taken, 
at the age of thirty-three, leaving her fond 
husband mateless, for her sake, to the end of 
his life. Mr. Sheffield took but slight interest 
in politics, and none whatever from the stand- 
point of personal ambition; but he read much 
and possessed a large fund of general informa- 
tion. He was fond of travel, too, and indulged 
this taste to a considerable extent after the 
loss of his wife. He first took his children 
back to the old home in Nova Scotia, where 
they remained at school for a couple of years, 
then returned with them to Faribault, and 
after keeping them in school here for two 
years he took them to California for a sojourn 
of equal length. Again returning with them 
to Faribault, he made this city his abiding- 
place to the end, with the exception of a few 
winters spent in the South. He died on Octo- 
ber 15, 1899, in his seventieth year, at the 
home of his daughter, Mrs. Alson Blodgett, 
of Faribault. He had lived in retirement from 
active business during the last few years, his 
son, ex-Mayor B. B. Sheffield, taking charge of 
his milling interests. He had never ceased to 
mourn for his wife, but his children, to whom 
he was passionately devoted, tempered his sor- 
row, which brooded over his spirits as a 
gentle melancholy without embittering or es- 
tranging him from his fellow-men. The fol- 
lowing extract is from an editorial in the local 
press at the time of his death: 

"Mr. Sheffield was a man for whom every ac- 
quaintance had the highest respect, every 
friend the most abiding friendship, and every 
member of his household the most sincere af- 
fection. Faribault has had many citizens more 




The Century Publishing S. Engraving Co Chicago- 




BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



487 



pretentious, many whose passing ereated more 
stir in the waves that surge about us; but il 
never had a more useful citizen — one who did 
more in a solid, unostentatious way to benefit 
the city and its people than Milledge B. Shef- 
field." 



FRANK A. BLACKMER. 

Among the medical pioneers of Albert Lea, 
Minnesota. Frank Amos Blackmer, M. D., is 
one of the most prominent, enjoying also a 
high standing in the profession as a present 
practitioner. He is a native of Ohio, born at 
Amherst, January 10, 1847. The Blackmers 
are of English descent, emigrating ancestors 
having settled in New York State at an early 
period; and three uncles of Dr. Blackmer were 
soldiers in the War of 1812. His parents were 
Franklin and Minerva (Wilkins) Blackmer, his 
father having been a physician of wide reputa- 
tion who was in active practice for over forty 
years. In 1858, Dr. Franklin Blackmer took 
up a claim of Government land in Freeborn 
county, Minnesota, and in the following year 
moved his family hither. His farm lay about 
a mile from the city of Albert Lea, which has 
since expanded to such an extent that it now 
covers a portion of the original Blackmer 
claim. After settling in Albert Lea, Dr. Black- 
mer, the elder, followed his profession only 
during the Civil War. when Dr. Wedge — then 
the sole practicing physician in that section 
of the State — temporarily transferred to him 
the business and enlisted as surgeon in the 
army. Dr. Franklin Blackmer and his wife 
both died at Albert Lea. each at the age of 
about seventy-five years, and the farm home- 
stead is now the property of the junior Dr. 
Blackmer. The subject of this sketch obtained 
first a common-school education in the public 
institutions of Albert Lea, then — in 1863 — en- 
tered Oberlin College, where he pursued a 
five-years' course of study. Upon leaving col- 
lege, he became a student in the medical school 
at Cleveland, Ohio, now known as the Cleve- 
land Medical College, from which institution 
he graduated in February, 18G8, having but 
just attained his majority. Returning to Al- 
bert Lea, our youthful doctor of medicine en- 



tered, a month later, upon his professional 
career, which has been continuous both in time 
and in prosperity with the exception of one 
year, when he was incapacitated for active 
work by the effects of a wound received during 
a short term of service in the Civil War. He 
had enlisted on February 14, 18G2, in Com- 
pany C, Fifth Minnesota Infantry, was mus- 
tered in as sergeant, and, with his company, 
stationed at Fort Ripley. During the follow- 
ing summer he was present at the payment 
of the Indians at YeTlow Medicine, and, August 
22, participated in the battle of Fort Ridgely, 
receiving a severe gun-shot wound through the 
face, jaw and tongue. In consequence of be- 
ing thus disabled, he received his discharge 
from the service in October of the same year. 
On the 15th of October, 1872, Dr. Blackmer 
was married to France E. Wedge, of Fond du 
Lac, Wisconsin; and on November 11, 1873, a 
son — their only child — was born to them. This 
son, Roy C. Blackmer, was deprived of his eye- 
sight by an accident at the age of fourteen, 
and was for a time an attendant at the State 
school for the blind at Faribault. He is, how- 
ever, a high school graduate, and is well 
known in Albert Lea as the founder, proprietor 
and editor of the Freeborn County Times. Dr. 
Blackmer, with his family, attends the Pres- 
byterian church, to the support of which he 
contributes in proportion to his means. The 
Doctor is a Republican, but has never been an 
aspirant for political honors. His professional 
duties are exacting. One of the first physi- 
cians to locate in Albert Lea, he has built up 
a visiting practice which covers an extensive 
area of the country, in the widely dispersed 
homes of which his patients listen for the 
sound of his horse's feet, heralding the auspi- 
cious event of their weary day. 



WILLIS E. DODGE. 



Willis Edward Dodge, of Minneapolis, is of 
English descent, his ancestors having come to 
thi* country from England in 1670. Three 
brothers emigrated together, and their de- 
scendants took an active part in the Revolu- 



488 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



tion, in which they were known as "the 
Manchester men." Andrew Jackson Dodge, 
grandfather of Willis Edward, settled in Mont- 
pelier, Vermont, in 1812. The subject of this 
sketch was born at Lowell, Vermont, May 11, 
1857, the son of William Baxter Dodge and 
Harriett (Baldwin) Dodge. William B. Dodge 
was a farmer in ordinary circumstances. Wil- 
lis E. began his education in the public schools 
of Vermont, and later attended St. Johnbury 
Academy, where he took the classical course, 
preparatory for Dartmouth College. He did 
not, however, lake a college course, but began 
the study of law with Hon. W. W. Grout, a 
member of Congress from the Second Vermont 
District, and also read law with Hon. F. W. 
Baldwin, of Barton, Vermont, in 1879 and 1880. 
He was admitted to the bar in September, 1880, 
in Orleans county, Vermont. In October of 
that year he came west in search of better 
opportunities and settled at Fargo, North Da- 
kota. Subsequently he removed to Jamestown, 
North Dakota, where he was appointed attor- 
ney for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and held 
that office until July, 1887. He was then ap- 
pointed attorney for the St. Paul, Minneapolis 
& Manitoba Railway Company for Dakota, and 
returned to Fargo, where he lived for some 
time. "Colonel" Dodge, as he is familiarly 
known, has become distinguished for those 
strong personal and intellectual qualities inher- 
ited from his ancestors, who have been for a 
long time representative of the sturdy and 
brainy Green Mountain type. He is a man of 
extraordinary physical and mental energy, of 
intense powers of application, and one whose 
intellect is distinguished for its natural keen- 
ness and powers of discrimination. These nat- 
ural qualities, together with his experience in 
liot li the political and judicial arenas in the con- 
llicls which resulted in the building up of the 
great States of North and South Dakota, 
brought him to the front, even at an early age, 
as one of the ablest lawyers of the Northwest. 
From the front rank of the lawyers of the then 
new State of North Dakota, he came, in 1S0O, 
to the "Twin Cities" and took up his residence 
in Minneapolis, where his abilities at once re- 
ceived deserved recognition from both the 



courts and legal fraternity. He continued to 
act as attorney for the Great Northern Railway 
Company, formerly the St. Paul, Minneapolis 
& Manitoba Railway Company, in Minneapolis 
until January 1, 1900, when he was promoted 
to the position of general attorney for the com- 
pany, and removed to the general office build- 
ings of the company in St. Paul. While chiefly 
engaged in railroad litigation, his practice has 
covered a large field and has involved all the 
varied work which is imposed upon a general 
practitioner. In the defense and prosecution 
of cases of immense importance, few lawyers 
of the State have had an experience which 
equals his, either in extent or variety. Mr. 
Dodge has always been a Republican, and 
while a resident of North Dakota was made 
a member of the State Senate in 1886 and 1887. 
During his residence in Jamestown he served 
that city as its corporation counsel for eight 
years. March 27, 1882, Mr. Dodge married 
Hattie M. Crist, of Vinton, Iowa. They have 
two children, Dora Mae and William E. 



JOHN BLANCHARD. 

The late John Blanchard, of Minneapolis, 
was born at Sandusky, Ohio, March 31, 18-12. 
He was descended from Huguenot stock. His 
father. Rev. Benjamin Waite Blanchard. was 
for twenty years a Methodist circuit rider. In 
is It, he removed to Canada, and finally set- 
tled at Brockville. where John was educated, 
graduating from Albert College at a very early 
age. In 1862, when but twenty years old, 
he made his first visit to Minnesota. It was 
during the war. and 1). C. Shepard. of St. Paul, 
who was constructing the Iowa and Minnesota 
division of the Milwaukee railroad, had trouble 
in securing men. They advertised for men in 
the Canadian papers, and Mr. Blanchard un- 
dertook to secure a force of two hundred. He 
accompanied them to Minnesota, and was 
about to return to Canada. When those he 
had conducted to the wilds of .Minnesota saw 
him preparing to depart they too made ready 
to accompany him. They reasoned that the 
war was on, and that they might be impressed 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



489 



into the army. At this point Mr. Shepard 
told him that he could not go, as the 
men would not stay unless he remained. 
In order that the contractor might have 
the services of the men imported, Mr. 
Blanchard consented to remain nominally in 
charge of the men, but really with little to do 
beyond amusing himself. It was at this time 
that he was offered a farm in I he vicinity of 
Nicollet avenue and Seventeenth street for a 
month's salary, but after looking the field over 
he concluded that he would rather have the 
money. It was while engaged in this work 
that he did his first writing for the newspa- 
pers, and his letters to the Ottawa papers, 
relative to the Northwest, had much to do 
toward directing Canadian immigration in this 
direction. In the fall of the year, much against 
Mr. Shepard's wishes, he returned to Canada. 
While there he received several communica- 
tions urging him to return to Minnesota, but 
he declined the tempting offers. He married 
Miss Sarah Young at Norham, December 24, 
1SC2. Soon after this he went to New York 
and connected himself with a firm of publish- 
ers. His duties required him to visit every 
part of the country, and he kept up a continu- 
ous correspondence with the Canadian papers, 
particularly those at Ottawa. It was this work 
that created in him a desire to engage perma- 
nently in newspaper work. The opportunity 
soon came. In 1871 he spent some time with 
Mrs. Blanchard's relatives at Monticello, Iowa. 
He was a total stranger, but it was not long 
before he became quite well known. In some 
manner he was drawn into a controversy in 
the columns of the Monticello Express with a 
most orthodox theologian. The Bible was un- 
der discussion, and the strong articles from 
his pen soon attracted Slate wide attention, 
and his authorship was acknowledged. As 
soon as this became known he was besieged 
by leading men of Monticello to purchase the 
Express. Capitalists supported him in the en- 
terprise and he soon became owner of the pa- 
per. From that time his reputation as a writer 
increased, and the Monticello Express became 
known as one of the strongest papers in the 
State of Iowa. It was while at Monticello that 



he was made postmaster, by President Ha.\es. 
After publishing the Express for thirteen 
years, he removed to Dubuque in 1881 and 
accepted the position of editor of the Du- 
buque Times, and in a short time became part 
owner of that paper. At the time of his arrival 
Dubuque was a great Democratic stronghold, 
and General 1). I!. Henderson, now Speaker 
of the National House of Representatives, was 
a candidate for Congress. The fight was a hot 
one — perhaps the hottest the State of Iowa 
has ever seen, and the credit of General Hen- 
derson's victory, for he was elected, was 
given to the Dubuque Times' editorials. Mr. 
Blanchard was intimately acquainted with 
all the great politicians and other prominent 
men in the State, and partly as a reward for 
his great services in the Republican party, 
with which he was then allied, he was made 
State oil inspector by Governor Larrabee. In 
the spring of 1889 he disposed of his interest in 
the Dubuque Times and came to Minneapolis, 
where he engaged in some business ventures; 
but the old liking for newspaper work was too 
strong to be withstood, and in the fall of the 
year he became a member of the staff of the 
Minneapolis Times. At first he occupied a 
subordinate position as editorial writer, but it 
was not long before he became editor of the 
Times, which position he filled to the time 
of his death. It is doubtful if there was ever 
a harder working newspaper man in Minne- 
apolis. Mr. Blanchard was a glutton for work. 
He never knew when to stop, and from early 
in the day until late at night he was to be 
found at his desk. He had the courage of his 
convictions. What he thought was right he up- 
held, and what he thought was wrong he 
tiever hesitated to oppose. It is true that he 
made enemies, but his enemies admitted that 
his position was honestly taken. Generous 
to a fault, a "hard-luck story" always moved 
him, and there were many recipients of his 
generosity who will sorely miss him. Every 
newspaper man was his friend, and among his 
associates on The Times, as well as his inti- 
mates employed on the other Minneapolis pa- 
pers, he was affectionately known as "Uncle 
John." Courteous to all, this virtue was 



4QO 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



sometimes taken advantage of by well- 
meaning friends, but if they called when 
he was crowded with work he always 
found time to chat with the caller if it 
was a friendly visit, or to give aid and coun- 
sel if one was in trouble. All this he did, 
and the caller never knew that frequently he 
was delaying pressing work or interrupting 
the thread of an important editorial. Mr. 
Blanchard died at his home in Minneapolis, 
September 12, 1899. He is survived by his 
wife, a son. Clarence J. Blanchard, a daughter, 
Miss Evangelin Blanchard, and an adopted 
son, Shelley Blanchard, and three brothers. 
Of the many loving tributes paid to his mem- 
ory by the press and prominent men of the 
State, we have space for only one — that of 
Mayor James Gray, of Minneapolis — which 
seems to voice the universal sentiment of those 
who knew him best: 

"John Blanchard was a man whom his 
friends loved. No man had in larger degree 
that fine faculty of making men attach them- 
selves to him with bonds nearer and dearer 
than friendship. So his death is an inexpres- 
sible grief to those who knew him and had 
made themselves part of him. It is hard to 
say anything in the presence of such a sorrow. 
It would be better to nurse it iu the heart, 
there to do good, for a vivid remembrance of 
John Blanchard can be nothing less than an 
incentive to a hearty intellectual independence. 
He loved his friends so ardently that his mon- 
ument should be an intangible but altogether 
real uplifting of all those who ever came un- 
der his influence. 

As an editor, Mr. Blanchard was moved al- 
ways by a high sense of justice. He was an 
editor of the Greeley and Sam Battles type 
and, frankly, I do not believe he was inferior 
in either in professional gifts. It may be 
pointed out that Greeley was more prominent 
in the profession, but it does not argue that 
he was necessarily greater. It can be said of 
both that they rose to their opportunities and 
discharged their duties without fear. Mr. 
Blanchard had a wider sympathy than any 
modern editor. He wrote powerfully on poli- 
tics, entertainingly on aesthetics, sympathetic- 
ally on religion. He touched no subject that he 
did not adorn with dignified thought and fe- 
licitous expression. lie lived to see Ids paper 
discussing the high topics of life and always 
believed that the people were thinking of the 



good, the true, the beautiful, as well as upon 
the great enterprises and the violent struggles 
of the world. 

His editorials would fill many volumes, but 
they would be found directed always to one 
end — freedom of thought and independence of 
action. Like all men of genius and earnest life, 
Mr. Blanchard occasionally permitted himself 
to be playful, and when he wrote to be amus- 
ing, he touched a vein of humor that bubbled 
like a pure spring out of a mountain. 

He is gone, perhaps he will be forgotten. 
Newspaper work is not conducive to immor- 
tality. Ir is not intended to be permanent, 
except as it is based on truth, and truth often 
forgets to name the individual who was its 
servant. But who of those who knew him 
would exchange his smile, his greeting, his 
human interest for the privilege of gazing on 
a marble column. Sweet, kind soul ; pure and 
guileless heart, it cannot, it should not have 
none.'' 



JOSEPH A WHEELOCK. 

The name, Joseph A. Wheelock, editor-in- 
chief of the Pioneer Press of St. Paul, is fa- 
miliar to every one conversant, to any degree, 
with the personnel of American journalism. 
Associated with the newspapers of Minnesota, 
during the latter half of the century, he has 
given To Northwestern journalism, through 
the paper of his creation, a standard which has 
been and continues to be invaluable. The main 
position taken by a prominent newspaper, 
which speaks at once to and for the people, is 
vastly important; and an adequate study of 
the development of any given section must 
necessarily include a review of the attitude 
maintained by its leading newspaper. There- 
fore, although not conspicuously identified by 
name and office in public affairs of the North- 
west, Mr. Wheelock is nevertheless bound by 
the closest and finest ties to its history. The 
pioneer among Western editors, he is to be 
rated among the makers of the State as truly 
as the men who did their work in the Legisla- 
ture or the more conspicuous field of the ad- 
ministrative government. Joseph A. Whee- 
lock was born at Bridgtown, Nova Scotia. 
February 8, 1831. He was educated at Sack- 
ville Academy, and came to Minnesota in 1850, 
at the aye of nineteen. He began his business 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



49 1 



life as a clerk in a suttler's store at Fort Snell- 
ing, then a lively trading post. In 185G, he be- 
came editor of the Real Estate and Financial 
Advertiser, published in St. Paul, and in 1858 
he was attached to the editorial staff of the 
St. Paul Pioneer, where he remained for two 
years. In 1801 he was appointed commissioner 
of statistics for Minnesota, being the first to 
occupy that position. The report compiled by 
him during his two years' service in this ca- 
pacity was the first important collection of 
Minnesota statistics ever published, and is still 
a valuable work of reference, containing, as it 
does, an analysis of Minnesota's position in 
the plan of continental development, a careful 
outline of its physical characteristics and 
comparative geography and an exhaustive 
statement of its resources as ascertainable at 
that time. The character of ibis book is some- 
thing more than statistical, for it reveals the 
discrimination and far-seeing judgment of the 
man, who saw Minnesota's greatest possibili- 
ties and from them augured her mighty future. 
In 1861 Mr. Wheelock was married to Miss 
Kate French, daughter of Theodore French, 
of Concord, New Hampshire. At about the 
same period, he, in association with Hon. Will- 
iam R. Marshall, founded the St. Paul Press, 
and thus began his actual editorial career. He 
continued editor-in-chief of the Press up to the 
time and after its union with the Pioneer, and 
his work in this capacity established his repu- 
tation in journalism and gave the Northwest 
its first great newspaper. The stanch Repub- 
lican position adopted and maintained by the 
Press at the beginning of the war was the 
key-note of its future. From 1871 to 1875, Mr. 
Wheelock held the office of postmaster at St. 
Paul. Although, with the exception of this 
term and the appointment as commissioner of 
statistics, he has not held office in the State 
'of his adoption, he nevertheless figured ac- 
tively in some of the exciting crises of St. 
Paul's early history. In those days, which 
test the mettle of a community and frequently 
decide whether brute force or intelligence shall 
rule, the young Nova Scotian stood with his 
associates for the finer element in public af- 
fairs. The force of his personality proved in- 



cisive and indomitable and made a lasting 
impression upon his contemporaries. Although 
he enjoyed the advantages of education and a 
favorable environment in youth, he is yet to 
be regarded as a self-made man in the best 
sense, namely, through native ability, integrity 
and force. Among the important services Mr. 
Wheelock has rendered to St. Paul outside his 
profession, is his work on the park board of 
the city, in which he has been an active mem 
ber for years. To his untiring and judicious 
interest St. Paul owes some of the most im- 
portant improvements in its admirable park 
system. Into the paper whose fortunes he has 
moulded, however, Mr. Wheelock has put his 
life-work. In its history we read the character 
of the man. The qualities which have made him 
a marked figure in the history of this city and 
State, are honesty, fearlessness, confidence — 
honesty of mind, fearlessness of conviction, 
confidence in the cause of right. These attri- 
butes, backed by a remarkable intellectual 
equipment and combined with literary discern- 
ment and independence, are the essentials of 
creative journalism. As a thinker, Mr. Whee- 
lock is logical, clear and incisive. As a writer 
he has a trenchant polished style, rising to elo- 
quence at times and touched not infrequently 
with needful sarcasm. He is as fearless a 
fighter of shams as ho is a supporter of the 
truth. Stanchly Republican in his convictions 
he is as an editor broad in his sympathies and 
candid in his appreciation of his opponent's 
claim. Both as an editor and citizen his labors 
in the community have had an indelible influ- 
ence for progress and enlightenment. The his- 
tory of the Pioneer Press involves the history 
of its predecessors and progenitors. The Pio- 
neer, of Democratic traditions, was founded in 
1849 and had James M. Goodhue and Earl S. 
Goodrich as its successive editors. The Press, 
a few months after its birth, January, 1861, ab- 
sorbed the Minnesotian, which was founded iu 
1852. The consolidation with the Pioneer was 
effected in 1875, the first number appearing 
April 11. The political history of the paper 
is identical with that of the Republican parly 
in the Northwest. It has given the dominant 
note to Northwestern Republicanism, as well 



492 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



as Northwestern journalism. Its political tone 
Las been high and clean; its policy broad and 
candid. As a teacher of sound finance, it is 
not too much to say that the Pioneer Press has 
stood abreast with the oldest and ablest papers 
in the United States. It has done more than 
any one agency in the Northwest to combat er- 
ratic and superficial financial doctrines. It is 
equally sound on sociological questions, and in 
all religious and philanthropic issues it has 
maintained a dignified and tolerant position. 
Locally it has been a powerful agent in the 
development of the city, and has been constant 
in its advocacy of municipal reforms and pub- 
lic improvements. Mr. and Mrs. Wheelock 
have three children, Katrine, Mary Ellen and 
Webster. 



CHARLES I). GILFILLAN. 

Hon. Charles Duncan Gilfillan, of St. Paul, 
was born at New Hartford, Oneida county, 
New York, July 4, 1831. His parents, James 
and Agnes Gilfillan, were both natives of Ban- 
nockburn, Scotland. They emigrated to Amer- 
ica in 1830, and their son Charles, the subject 
hereof, was the only member of their family 
born in the United States. He was left an 
orphan at. a tender age, and when he was 
eleven years old went to Chenango county, 
New York, where he spent about five years in 
attendance at district schools in the wilder sea- 
sons and working on a farm and in a sawmill 
the remainder of the time. His education was 
finished at Homer Academy and at Hamilton 
College. He entered the latter institution in 
1848, and remained about two years. In 1850 
he came to Missouri, and taught school the en- 
suing fall and winter at Potosi, in the iron 
region, south of St. Louis. In the spring of 
1851, Mr. Gilfillan came to the then new Ter- 
ritory of Minnesota and located at Stillwater. 
Here, for the ensuing eighteen months, he en- 
gaged in teaching, spending his spare time in 
the study of law under the instruction of Hon. 
Michael E. Ames. He was admitted to the bar 
in 1853, and soon after formed a law partner- 
ship with Mr. Gold T. Curtis. In the spring of 



1854, at the first municipal election in Still 
water, he was elected town recorder, bu1 in 
the succeeding fall resigned and moved to St. 
Paul. In 1857, he formed a partnership in the 
practice with his brother the late Hon. James 
Gilfillan, a former eminent Justice of the State 
Supreme Court, and this association continued 
until 1803, when Mr. Gilfillan retired and prac- 
tically abandoned the practice of his profes 
sion. Mr. Gilfillan has been connected with 
the varied interests of St. Paul during his resi- 
dence here, to a prominent degree. He was 
the founder and practical proji tor of the 
water works system of the city. . . (, ier due 
study and investigation be commenced, in 
1868, practically singl handed, although a so 
dated with some other,-, to construct the sys 
tern, and with what mon. • he had of his own 
and what he could borrow, pushed the enter 
prise to successful completion, ami on Augusl 
23, 18(10, the water was introduced and began 
to flow. The old St. Paul Water Company was 
chartered in 1857, but nothing was done under 
the franchise until Mr. Gilfillan secured it Be 
was the president and secretary of the com- 
pany and its leading and master spirit from 
the time he assumed its control until the sale 
of the system to the city, in 1882, and was for 
several years thereafter a member of the board 
of water commissioners. In 1S82 he built the 
well-known block which bears his name — at 
Fourth and Jackson streets — the pioneer build- 
ing of its proportions and character in the 
city. He has operated largely in city real 
estate, has been connected with the banking 
interests, and has held many positions of pub- 
lic and private trust and responsibility. His 
private interests are large and somewhat 
varied, and have required much of his time and 
attention. He owns and operates a splendid 
farm at Morgan, Redwood county, which is 
pronounced the best and largest stock farm in 
the State. His farm house has been his resi- 
dence a great portion of the time for several 
years. Though so busily engaged with mate- 
rial affairs, he has found time for attention to 
other matters. He has traveled extensively, 
and at intervals and for considerable periods 
has resided abroad, where the education of his 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



493 



children has been completed. Mr. Gilfillan has 
always been a Republican since the founding 
of that party. He participated in its formal 
organization in Minnesota, in 1855, and was 
the first chairman of the Territorial central 
committee, holding the position for four years. 
In 1860 he was the Republican candidate for 
mayor of St. Paul, but was defeated by the 
late Hon. John S. Prince, by fifteen votes. He 
has served in both houses of the State Legis- 
lature, altogether for a period of thirteen 
years. Prom 1878 to 1885, inclusive, he was a 
member of the State Senate. No other citi- 
zen in the State has taken more interest in the 
preservation of its history or in its general 
welfare. He was chairman of the Birch Coulie 
Monument Commission, that built the shaft 
at Morton, which commemorates the notable 
incident of the Indian battle, and he is presi- 
dent of the Minnesota Valley Historical So- 
ciety, which has already done much and 
promises to do more along the same lines. His 
public spirit and generous disposition have 
been of great value, not only to this society, 
but to other societies and organizations with 
which he has been connected. Mr. Gilfillan has 
been twice married. His first wife — whom he 
married in 1859 — was Miss Emma C. Waage, 
daughter of Rev. Fred Waage, a Lutheran 
clergyman. She died in 1863, and in 1865 he 
married her sister. Miss Fanny S. Waage. By 
the latter marriage there are four children, 
whose Christian names are Emma <"., Fannie 
W., Charles O. and Frederick J. 



WILLIAM H. LAIRD. 

William H. Laird, of Winona, was born 
in Union county. Pennsylvania, in 1833. 
His father, Robert Hayes Laird, was of 
Scotch-Irish ancestry, and his mother, Maria 
Nevins, of Holland Dutch descent. In 
early manhood William H. came to Min- 
nesota, and having canvassed the oppor- 
tunities to his satisfaction, settled in Winona 
in 1855. On June 1, of that year, he associated 
himself with his brothers, J. C. and M. J. Laird, 
in the lumber business, the firm name being 



Laird Brothers. In the fall of 1856 Messrs. 
James L. and M. G. Norton became partners 
in the business and the style of the firm was 
changed to Laird. Norton & Company. This 
was the origin of what is perhaps the oldest 
and most successful business house in the city 
of Winona, long since incorporated as the 
Laird, Norton Company. Mr. Laird's life in 
Winona, now about forty-four years in dura- 
tion, has been crowded with activity, and his 
interest in all the affairs of the city has been 
constant and fruitful. At the present time, 
he is president of the Laird, Norton Lumber 
Company, one of the largest lumbering con- 
cerns in the State; president of the Winona 
Lumber Company, also of the Second National 
Bank, and one of the leading officers of 
I he First Congregational church; of Wood- 
lawn Cemetery Association, and of several 
other public societies. The new Winona Li- 
brary building, which has recently been built 
at a cost of $50,000, was the gift of Mr. Laird 
to the city. This building is the first direct 
personal gift which Mr. Laird has made to 
the community, but his contributions to all 
worthy causes have been numerous and large 
for many years. He has for a long time been 
one of the trustees of Carlton College at 
Northfield, the Congregational school of the 
State, and a liberal contributor to its finances. 
For the First Congregational Society of 
Winona he built, in 1890, the parsonage build- 
ing adjoining the church, it being presented 
as a memorial to his deceased wife, Mary Wat- 
son Laird. 



CHARLOTTE O. VAN CLEVE. 

.Mis. Charlotte Ouisconsin (Clark) Van Cleve, 
widow of the distinguished soldier, the late 
Maj. Gen. H. P. Van Cleve, was born July 1, 
1819, at old Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, 
Wisconsin (then spelled Ouisconsin). The orig- 
inal Indian name was perpetuated in naming 
their infant child. Her father, Nathan Clark, 
was then a lieutenant in the Fifth Regiment 
of Infantry, U. S. A., which was on its way to 
build a fort at the mouth of the St. Peters 



494 



RIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



river (now Minnesota). As .soon as proper 
preparations were made, the troops ascended 
the Ouisconsin river to that point, and in the 
spring of 1820 a post called Fort St. Anthony 
was located. In August of the same year, Col. 
Joshua Snelling arrived, and changed the site 
and the name to Fort Snelling. Of her early 
life, Mrs. Van Cleve says: "As the child of a 
soldier, I have lived in many places, and in" 
Nashville, Tennessee, our family boarded in 
the same house with General Jackson at the 
time of his election as President." However, 
nearly all of her eighty years of useful and 
worthy life has been spent in Minnesota, and 
she is the oldest living settler in the State. 
From a characteristic sketch of Mrs. Van 
Cleve, by Mary D. McFadden, published in the 
Minneapolis Times, we quote the following: 
"The venerable lady is living at her home in 
southeast Minneapolis. A sweet motherly old 
face is crowned by a silken aureola of snowy 
hair. The dear old lady uses an ear-trumpet 
now, but when one speaks of the old days at 
Fort Snelling, she is eager to listen to all ques- 
tions, and is ever an eloquent talker. She 
has written for the State Historical Society her 
memoirs in a charming book, 'Three Score 
Years and Ten.' * * * * Mrs. Van Cleve 
was but a few weeks old when her father. 
Major Clarke, arrived at the fort with Colonel 
Leavenworth's command. She was born en 
route to the fort, one hour after the party had 
stopped to rest at the half-breed village of 
Prairie du Chien, in July, 1819. She remem- 
bers her mother's stories of her baby days at 
the fort. How she was 'borrowed' by friendly 
Indians and fondled, always under the watch- 
ful eyes of a guard, and returned to the arms 
of her parents, loaded with exquisite Indian 
ornaments, the consummate art of the bead 
embroiderer. With her beloved brother Mal- 
colm (who was afterwards treacherously mur- 
dered by Indians in Montana), the Snelling 
children and other little ones, she studied in 
the little stone school house which was lo- 
cated to the left of the entrance of the old fort. 
Her eyes grow dim as she tells of those happy 
days, three-quarters of a century ago. She re- 
members Minnehaha falls as described in im- 



mortal verse by Longfellow, and she sighs over 
the desecration brought upon it by the vandal, 
civilization. Even the old walls surrounding 
the fort have been ruthlessly torn down, and 
much of its picturesque beauty destroyed by 
their loss. And the clinging ivy has been torn 
from the ancient round tower. Mother Van 
Cleve is known and loved by the Fort Snelling 
soldiers as the 'Mother of the Regiment,' just 
as she was known by the Seventh in early 
days, as the 'Daughter of the Regiment.' * 
The evening gun booms solemnly 
across the plains just as of old. The brave flag 
is raised and lowered, saluted and cheered as 
it was in the long ago: reveille wakes the tired 
soldier and ushers in the morning in the same 
old way, but only one i.- ho ' - to 

the evening gun. ;hes wit] I 

dimmed eves the old flag rise and fall, wh. 
the first flag raised an heard the first salute 
fired into the twilight. SI : nappy and be- 
loved, and bids fair to prolong the sunset time 
of life, and amid the memories ol p vouth, 
and the evidences of wonderful progres made 
by her below, 1 Stale. The eighty win, 
which have silvered the golden hair of the 
baby of the regiment have mellowed with age 
the old stone buildings. .Many new ones have 
been added since the days of Colonel Snelling, 
but the school house and the old wall will not 
greet the eyes of the next generation, and will 
soon pass from memory into history. Fort 
Snelling in history is a relic of the past, a 
reality of the present and a promise of the fu- 
ture." 



JAMES J. HILL. 



James Joseph Hill, of St. Paul, president of 
the Great Northern Railway, is a native of the 
province of Ontario, Canada, the son of Scotch- 
Irish parents. His mother was a member of 
I he famous Dunbar family of Scotland, whose 
lineage is traced to the Stuarts, and his father 
emigrated from the north of Ireland with his 
grandfather's family while still a lad. The 
family settled on lands of the Canada Com- 
pany well to the frontier, early in the present 



BIOGRAPHY OP MINNESOTA. 



495 



century-lands subsequently included within 
the boundaries of Wellington comity. Janus 
J Hill was born on this frontier farm, near 
Eockwood, September 16, 1838. In boyhood 
he attended the academy at Eockwood, 
where he acquired a good English education, 
some knowledge of Latin and excelled in 
mathematics. In his early youth his fathei 
died, and, obliged thenceforward to rely upon 
Ms own resources, he engaged as clerk in a 
general store, where lie remained two years, 
continuing his reading and study meanwhile. 
\t eighteen he was well enough informed to 
appreciate the m. -e favorable conditions in 
the United B1 >r the advancement of a 

a i ition, energy and industry. 

He the) l ada for St. Paul, where 

he i oca ted i July, 1856. For the first 
fou, years - Hill was employed 

fly as shipping clerk by several river 
transportation firms, and for the second 
period of (our years by a St. Paul agency for 
the Galena Packel Company and the Davidson 
of steamers. Here he gained the first in- 
Bight and practical knowledge of a business 
which has mad,- him famous-the business of 
carrying the products of agriculture and manu- 
factures and the articles of -commerce from 
the producer to the consumer and the trades- 
man His first experience was on the water 
routes, but he learned the principles ot- trans- 
portation business and familiarized himself 
with all the details of management, so that it 
was easy subsequently to apply his knowledge 
to other systems ou a larger scale. In 1865 he 
was appointed agent of the Northwestern 
Packet Company, and managed its business 
for two years, at the end of which he engaged 
on his own account in a general transportation 
and fuel supply business, which was continued 
after two years by the firm of Hill Briggs & 
Company, of which he was the head. Mr. Hill 
had become possessed of large interests on the 
Red river, which in 1871 were combined with 
those of Norman W. Kittson, St. Paul agent 
of the Hudson Bay Company, of which Donald 
A. Smith, the Canadian diplomat and states- 
man, was the managing commissioner. The 
association proved most fortunate for both 



parties, as it united diversified interests in the 
development of an enterprise of vast impor- 
tance and value to all of them, increasing the 
credit and commanding capital essential to the 
success of the undertaking. Mr. Hill's pene- 
tration foresaw the incalculable advantage of 
being first to occupy the immense and fertile 
valley of the Red river with a line of railroad, 
which would aid in opening for settlement 
millions of acres of unfilled lands, whose prod- 
ucts would supply profitable business for a 
transportation system. The opportunity was 
opened to him by the failure of the St. Paul 
and Pacific Railroad Company to meet the in- 
terest on its bonds in 1873. He aspired to the 
possession of this company's indebtedness, 
amounting to $33,000,000, in order to gain con- 
trol of the franchise and real property, so as 
to complete the work of construction and reap 
the benefits. The foreign holders of the bonds, 
alarmed by the seemingly hopeless outlook 
for the property, were glad to sell them at a 
large discount. Sir Donald Smith was a for- 
midable ally of Mr. Hill, and George Stephen, 
president of the Bank of Montreal, also in- 
terested in the Hudson Bay Company, was an 
important factor in effecting the purchase of 
the bonds. The defaulting company was in 
a receiver's hands, who took charge of the un- 
finished road, and under direction of the court, 
extended the main line to St. Vincent. The 
bondholders finally foreclosed their mortgages 
in 1879 and secured possession of all the prop- 
erty. A reorganization was at once effected 
under the name of the St. Paul, Minneapolis 
and Manitoba Company, with George Stephen 
of Montreal as president, and James J. Hill of 
St. Paul as general manager. In 1882 Mr. Hill 
was elected vice-president and in 1883 was 
elected president. From that time to the pres- 
ent he has had the executive control and man- 
agement. Mr. Hill was one of the originators 
of the scheme to construct the Canadian Pa- 
cific Railway and one of the incorporators of 
the company, in connection with Ms asso- 
ciates, George Stephen and Sir Donald Smith, 
and some London capitalists, including E B. 
Angus and Morton, Bliss & Company. On his 
election to the presidency of the St. P., M. & M. 



496 



BIOGRAPHY OF MINNESOTA. 



road, which is now commonly known as the 
deal Northern, Mr. Hill disposed of his inter 
est in the Canadian Pacific, and, having pre- 
viously sold his interests in the Northwestern 
Fuel Company and the Red River Navigation 
Company, he was free to concentrate his crea- 
tive genius and powerful energies in the en- 
largement of the Great Northern system and 
its executive management. The results 
wrought by this concentration are unparal- 
leled in the history of railroad construction in 
any part of the world. Out of the single line 
from St. Paul to St. Vincent has grown a great 
system embracing 5,000 miles, extending from 
Duluth to Yankton. South Dakota, and from 
St. Paul and Minneapolis to Paget Sound, 
with numerous connecting links and short 
lines traversing the rich farming districts. 
The achievement is all the more marvelous 
when it is understood that every mile of the 
vast system, except about six hundred miles of 
the original line in Minnesota, was constructed 
without a land grant or bonus of any kind — 
built and equipped without overcapitalization 
or excessive bonding — the entire capitalization 
in stock and bonds not exceeding $28,000 per 
mile. Having by his railroad connected the 
tide water of the Pacific with the head-waters 
of the great lakes, Mr. Hill has extended his 
transportation system eastward a thousand 
miles by establishing on the chain of lakes a 
line of magnificent steamers for freight and 
passengers, running on a regular schedule be- 
tween Duluth and Buffalo during the period of 
navigation. Two of these, the "Northland" 
and the "Northwest," are the most superb 
steamships ever constructed for inland waters. 
The ability of Mr. Hill as an economist, and 
his success as a financier, have established his 
credit in the commercial centers and financial 
markets of the world, so that his request for 
a hundred millions to be expended in the (level 
opment of any undertaking approved by his 
judgment and managed by himself would read- 
ily be honored. He was consulted by the sec- 
retary of the United States treasury and by 
President Cleveland, when the National credit 
was threatened and the advice of the wisest 
financiers was needed. The strongest man un- 



der the stress of perplexing cares and enor- 
mous responsibilities would break and fail in 
a few years, if his labors were unremitting. 
He must have diversion and seasons of rest, 
during which he may throw off care as a gar- 
ment, and have his mental and physical pow- 
ers recreated. Mr. Hill appreciated this neces- 
sity and provided for it. Long ago he 
purchased and improved a fine stock farm, 
situated a few miles from St. Paul, which, 
while serving him as a means of recreation, 
has also furnished the farmers of the State 
with the seed for improving their live-stock. 
On this farm are bred some of the choicest 
strains of stock, from which selected animals 
have been given without charge to progressive 
farmers, and in this way hundreds of domestic 
herds have been improved. Another method 
of recreation, in favor of Mr. Hill, is the grati- 
fication of a natural and cultivated taste for 
art. He has collected in his private gallery 
from the best studios and most renowned gal- 
leries of Europe the rarest works of old and 
modern masters, so that his collection is not 
excelled in value or variety by that of any 
private citizen's gallery in the country. 

Mr. Hill's public spirit has shown itself 
in many ways. His contributions for the 
building of churches and schools and for 
the foundation of charities have been very 
large. For the endowment of one institu- 
tion and the erection of its buildings his 
gifts have aggregated half a million. This 
institution is for the professional training 
of candidates for the priesthood in a great re- 
ligious sect to which Mr. Hill does not himself 
belong. This school will preserve the good 
American citizenship of its students, while 
making them good theologians. In all coun- 
tries the clergy is the largest single force for 
the molding of public opinion and the con- 
trolling of public action. Hence a monarchy 
cannot be the best place for training the clergy 
of a republic. The men who give their money 
to provide American schools for training 
American clergymen are benefactors of the 
American people. Mr. Hill may be classed 
distinctly with the optimists — the progressive 
men of to-day who affirm that the present is 



RIOGRArHY OF MINNESOTA. 



497 



better than any pasl age, bu1 the highest ex- 
cellence lias not ye1 been reached. He believes 
the opportunities of the future in the United 
States for young men who are ambitious, 
capable, honest and industrious, are just as 
inviting and promising as they have been at 
any time. The country is new; its resources 
are only partially developed. The problems of 
architecture, engineering and invention, and 
the practical application of occult forces to the 
vastly multiplied operations of industry and 
transportation afford ample scope for product- 
ive genius. It is only necessary that the 
voir \ man, having other essential qualiflca- 
ti , shall aspire; that he shall have con- 
tly in view the Main chance, and then 
work while tie waits. II is among Mr. Hill's 



greatesl pleasures to advance capable and de- 
serving young men. He also takes a thought- 
ful interest in public affairs and questions of 
National policy, in which his sympathy has 
generally been with the Democratic party. He 
was happily married early in life, and he is 
the head of a family comprising three sons 
and six daughters, who have been carefully ed- 
ucated. The sons have been trained to the 
business in which the father has achieved 
greatness; James N. has the supervision of the 
operating and engineering departments of the 
Great Northern; Lewis W. is the vice-presi- 
dent of the Eastern Railway of Minnesota. One 
daughter married Samuel Hill, president of 
one of the branches of the Great Northern. 



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